I have resisted reading about and digging into REST for a while now. Every time I would pick up an article or book I felt like I transported back to the 90's and I was reading an old HTML 2.0 book or specification. The stuff I started on the internet with. To me the REST movement is kind of like the A-HA moment of the internet programming community. Kind of like, "O... that is what they intended".

This book brought all those back in time feelings up all throughout the first 2 chapters. I must say though, that I thoroughly enjoyed reading them. The history lesson and the state of things today, where very well written and kept my attention and interest throughout both chapters. The author's do a great job of digging into the guts of the foundations of REST, which really helps in the later chapters when they discuss the .NET tools used to develop RESTful solutions.

I also like that the authors aren't RESTful zealots. They give Web Services their rightful place and do not present REST as a new silver bullet, but rather a new tool for the tool belt.

They cover a ton of stuff in the remaining chapters and appendixes including using RESTful services from desktop applications using Windows Forms and WPF, using Silverlight 2.0, JavaScript, the ASP.NET MVC Framework, WCF 3.5, IIS 7.0, and Azure. Every chapter goes deep enough into the topic to give you a great start down the right path of using the technology.

The book is a very pleasant read and is well organized.

The downloadable code is very usable, well organized, and contains some great example implementations.

I also have noticed the authors are keeping the accompanying web site up to date and have already released a code fix.

If you want to learn the ins and outs of RESTful Services using .NET technologies, this book is the ticket.

I highly recommend this book.

.Net developers now have several technology options for building applications that consume and/or serve up RESTful services. This book provides tutorials on potentially popular .Net 3.5 and up technology options, including the relatively new ASP.Net MVC and Azure (Cloud Computing) Services Frameworks (the latter is still a technology preview, but download links are provided). The book begins with two helpful chapters that introduce RESTful concepts in great detail and provide guiding principles for designing RESTful Services. Desktop (i.e., WinForms and Windows Presentation Foundation) and Web (i.e., Silverlight 2.0) Client technologies for consuming RESTful Services are tackled next (code samples provided include code for a simple PhotoManager Service which is discussed in greater detail in later chapters). Chapter Five (IIS [7.0] and ASP.Net Internals and Instrumentation) is a special chapter that sets things up for later discussions of server-side technologies, which starts with a discussion in Chapter Six of how to build a basic home-grown RESTful Services Framework for use with plain ASP.Net applications using only HTTPHandlers, UriTemplate, UriTemplateMatch, and UriTemplateTables. The remaining chapters then show you how it's possible to build more complex applications using increasingly more sophisticated technologies such as ASP.Net MVC, Windows Communications Framework (WCF), ADO.Net Data Services, and Azure Cloud Computing Services.

The authors do a great job introducing each technology so that even readers who may be unfamiliar with one or more of the covered technologies would still be able to follow the discussion easily if they are somewhat comfortable with XML, JSON, and LINQ. They have definite opinions about how to use some of these technologies effectively and readers will find their advice worth considering. Of course, in deciding to go for breadth of coverage, the authors can only discuss each technology to a certain level of depth.