Understanding Force.com REST Resources

A REST resource is an abstraction of a piece of information, such as a single data record, a collection of records, or even dynamic real-time information. Each resource in the Force.com REST API is identified by a named URI, and is accessed using standard HTTP methods (HEAD, GET, POST, PATCH, DELETE). The Force.com REST API is based on the usage of resources, their URIs, and the links between them. You use a resource to interact with your Salesforce or Force.com organization. For example, you can:

Retrieve summary information about the API versions available to you.
Obtain detailed information about a Salesforce object such as an Account or a custom object.
Obtain detailed information about Force.com objects, such as User or a custom object.
Perform a query or search.
Update or delete records.

Suppose you want to retrieve information about the Salesforce version. To do this, submit a request for the Versions resource (this example uses cURL on the na1 instance ):

1curl https://na1.salesforce.com/services/data/

The output from this request is as follows:

1[
2    {
3        "version":"20.0",
4        "url":"/services/data/v20.0",
5        "label":"Winter '11"
6    }
7    ...
8]

Salesforce runs on multiple server instances. The examples in this guide use the na1 instance. The instance your organization uses might be different.

Note

Important characteristics of the Force.com REST API resources and architecture:

Stateless: Each request from client to server must contain all the information necessary to understand the request, and not use any stored context on the server. However, the representations of the resources are interconnected using URLs, which allow the client to progress between states.
Caching behavior: Responses are labeled as cacheable or non-cacheable.
Uniform interface: All resources are accessed with a generic interface over HTTP.
Named resources: All resources are named using a base URI that follows your Force.com URI.
Layered components: The Force.com REST API architecture allows for the existence of such intermediaries as proxy servers and gateways to exist between the client and the resources.
Authentication: The Force.com REST API supports OAuth 2.0 (an open protocol to allow secure API authorization). See Understanding Authentication for more details.
Support for JSON and XML: JSON is the default. You can use the HTTP ACCEPT header to select either JSON or XML, or append .json or .xml to the URI (for example, /Account/001D000000INjVe.json).; The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format is supported with UTF-8. Date-time information is in ISO8601 format.; XML serialization is similar to SOAP API. XML requests are supported in UTF-8 and UTF-16, and XML responses are provided in UTF-8.

Force.com REST API Developer's Guide

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Understanding Force.com REST Resources