users@jersey.java.net

[Jersey] Re: stateless REST

From: Lenny Primak <lprimak_at_hope.nyc.ny.us>
Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2016 11:05:52 -0500

Trenton, I feel your pain.
In all honesty, the technology architecture didn’t change all that much in the last 10 years.
Don’t get caught up in the Rest/Microservices hype too much.
For BBAs (boring business apps) which I believe that you are dealing with (and I also like developing),
it makes very little sense migrating to Rest-based architecture.
Concentrate on cleaning, refactoring, modularizing your code, using the latest iterations of Java EE specs that you are already using.

So, why all the hype?
Current Rest “state-of-the-art” today is actually in it’s very infancy. It makes sense for some applications to do it though, but not for BBAs.
What apps does the Stateless Rest APIs make sense for?
- Multiple clients written separately by different teams (i.e. native iOS, native Android, native JavaScript)
- APIs that other companies use in different (non-Java) languages
- There are some other use cases also, but the above are the major ones

What’s the negative impact of Rest services today, as it relates to Java client and server development?
- Massive violation of DRY principle, as it’s really meant for client and server to be written in different languages,
i.e. client in JavaScript/iOS/Android and server in Java
- Data models are duplicated both in Java (on the server) and on the client (JS/iOS/Android)
- Validation is duplicated on the client and server
- Some business logic may need to be duplicated in the client and server

The above negatives are something that are not solved by the industry quite yet, and for BBAs, (IMHO) is not worth the effort.

As far as answering your specific question, in “pure” Rest API, All state is indeed handled by the client, including authentication.
Authentication is usually handled by “bearer token” paradigm, is sent with every request to the server, and thus re-authenticated by the server every time.
Yes, it sounds (and is) a bit less efficient on per-request basis (throughput per instance), but does (horizontally) scale better to millions of users.


> On Jun 9, 2016, at 4:40 PM, Trenton D. Adams <trenton.d.adams_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> One thing I didn't mention, is that I'm considering updating one of our enterprise apps to more modern technologies, where it actually saves effort. It is currently based on RMI, with a custom web front-end/mvc framework based on a the command pattern. So, I'm trying to determine whether we should do EJB or JAX-RS for the back-end, and possibly JAX-RS for the front end. One of the issues is that EJB is almost a drop in replacement for RMI. It would require significant more effort to switch to JAX-RS.
>
> When the back end is stateless, it's simply pushing the complexity to the client. It is now the client that must do all the work to know what it needs to send; i.e. it keeps it's own state. For the back end, that's HIGHLY scale-able technology wise, but has other drawbacks. With a stateful back-end, you just set the firstname, lastname, birthdate, etc, and pass around a reference to the back-end object, such as with EJB. Neither the front end nor the back end have to maintain much state, programmatically speaking; it's the service that does that (EJB for example). This saves developer time, does it not?
>
> It seems that using the html5 stuff would be a pain in the butt. Mainly because html5's storage system can't store a javascript object even, so you can't even abstract your data storage. Plus, we'd end up not supporting people with older machines/browsers. And then, if you have a series of web pages that a person is going through, you'd have to write code to grab all of that, and pass it to the server.
>
> So, should I not use JAX-RS if I'm wanting to maintain state? I mean it kind of goes against the "ST" in REST. Nothing actually prevents you from maintaining state though.
>
> I've read some articles where people say you shouldn't even be maintaining state of authentication. That I don't agree with, because some services don't even have access to the user's credentials. So at some point, someone is going to have to maintain state. So, you could either not use JAX-RS, or use it and maintain state while doing so, but essentially violate it's principles.
>
> Also, doesn't statelessness become very complex when you have larger enterprise applications?
>
> I see a lot of benefits of JAX-RS, and a lot of drawbacks. Am I missing something?
>
> On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 5:46 PM, cowwoc <cowwoc_at_bbs.darktech.org <mailto:cowwoc_at_bbs.darktech.org>> wrote:
> Define "application logic".
>
> In the case you mentioned below (storing the user's last name somewhere) I would favor using localStorage and sessionStore to store this information:http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_webstorage.asp <http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_webstorage.asp>
> The client would read the information from the local store and use it to make AJAX calls.
>
> I misspoke earlier when I talked about Cookies. These are typically used to reference to a server-side state that is present across all calls. If some REST calls need one piece of information and others need another, I would pull them from the local/sessionStore and pass them to the AJAX calls as needed.
>
> Gili
>
>
> On 2016-06-08 7:40 PM, Trenton D. Adams wrote:
>> So are you saying push all the application logic to the browser, using javascript? Are cookies really intended to store a whole bunch of user data?
>>
>> I know with HTML5, you can use sessionStorage.setItem("lastname", "last name"). But, I don't think moving most application logic into a browser is very maintainable, maybe I'm wrong though.
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 5:29 PM, cowwoc <cowwoc_at_bbs.darktech.org <mailto:cowwoc_at_bbs.darktech.org>> wrote:
>> Without commenting on the specifics of Jersey, I agree: REST is for computers, not humans.
>>
>> I typically expose REST APIs for computers and use cookies to maintain browser sessions. The browser can then read stateful information from the Cookie and serve it to stateless REST APIs. Not all clients are web-browsers, so your REST API should be designed around non-browsers.
>>
>> Gili
>>
>>
>> On 2016-06-08 5:58 PM, Trenton D. Adams wrote:
>>> Good day,
>>>
>>> I'm a bit confused. I actually have two separate questions. I understand that REST is supposed to be done in a stateless way. For regular web services that's easy. I mean it really shifts a lot of the work to the client, where it seems to be more difficult to deal with, but as far as the server goes, it's simple.
>>>
>>> However, how is it even possible to use jersey templates without state (sessions), in a reasonable way? The browser isn't going to maintain the state. It seems that one would need to make sure each and every page puts hidden inputs from the previous form, in the html output, so that it is re-submitted with the new request. That would be a lot of work. If the user presses the back button, all that state vanishes, and the user must re-enter any screens they go forward to again. This doesn't make for a very good user experience.
>>>
>>> Can someone explain to me how the use of JAX-RS as an MVC framework is even possible in a reasonable way, while being stateless?
>>>
>>> Then, can someone explain to me how statelessness in a back-end REST web service, promotes good code design, where user interaction is a necessity? It seems to me that the client would then need to maintain all the state, thereby tightly coupling all the data points between the different controllers on the client. Something like EJB allows you to pass around the stateful pointer, and you simply add data as you go.
>>>
>>> After reading this stack exchange post, it's sounding like everyone thinks that REST is NOT for users, but for services only.
>>> <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3105296/if-rest-applications-are-supposed-to-be-stateless-how-do-you-manage-sessions>http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3105296/if-rest-applications-are-supposed-to-be-stateless-how-do-you-manage-sessions <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3105296/if-rest-applications-are-supposed-to-be-stateless-how-do-you-manage-sessions>
>>>
>>> I understand that it's more scalable, as the server always knows exactly what you want, because you're telling it every time. But it seems like that would come with a lot more boilerplate coding.
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>
>>
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