HI Sravani,

REST stands for Representational State Transfer, and it is an architectural style for designing networked applications. A REST API is a set of rules and conventions that allows different software applications to communicate and interact with each other over the internet.

In a REST API, resources are identified by unique URLs (Uniform Resource Locators). These resources can be any type of data, such as a user, a product, or an image. The API provides a way to perform operations on these resources, such as retrieving, creating, updating, or deleting them.

The key principles of a REST API include:

1. Stateless: Each request from a client to a server should contain all the necessary information for the server to understand and process the request. The server should not store any client-specific data between requests.
2. Client-Server Architecture: The client and server are separate entities that communicate over the network. The client makes requests to the server, and the server processes those requests and sends back responses.
3. Uniform Interface: The API should have a standardized interface, typically based on HTTP methods such as GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. Each method has a specific purpose, such as retrieving data (GET), creating new data (POST), updating existing data (PUT), or deleting data (DELETE).
4. State Transfer: The server can transfer the state of a resource to the client in a response. This state can be represented in different formats, such as JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) or XML (eXtensible Markup Language).

REST APIs are widely used in web development because they provide a scalable and flexible way to integrate different applications and systems. They are language-agnostic, meaning that different programming languages and platforms can interact with a REST API as long as they can make HTTP requests.

Developers can use REST APIs to build applications that retrieve data from external sources, integrate with third-party services, or expose their own services to be consumed by other applications.

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