What's the quickest way to write a simple browser client to talk to a REST server

Friday, March 19, 2010 by Nate Bross

Someone asked on Stack Overflow:

I’d like to create a simple browser client that I’ll to demo the REST API we have implemented on a server. I need basic functionality like

1. Create an item on server using POST: client fills up a few parameters and posts
2. Get list and display using GET: client sends a query, gets an XML list of items and displays them

I don’t need any fancy UI, this just for an internal quick demo, a reasonable UI is totally OK.

I know C++, Java, and Perl, but no Javascript. Is JS the easiest way to do this (I am time constrained, have about half a day to implement this)? If so, can you point me to a good resource where I can just pick up the pieces I need?

I posted the following answer, which was chosen as the accepted answer and received 2 upvotes:

If you want to write javascript and html/css UI to run in a browser, you could use jQuery and its ajax methods.

$(document).ready(function() {
    $.get("your/restful/url/here", function(data) { // do stuff with data here});
    $.post("your/restful/url/here", function(data) { // do stuff with data here});
});

You could extend the above even further like this:

$(document).ready(function() {
    $("post").click(function() { 
        $.post("/restful/?parm1=" + $("#input1").val() + "&parm2=" + $("#input2").val() , function(data) { // do stuff with data here});
    });
});

<input type="text" id="input1" />
<input type="text" id="input2" />
<input type="submit" id="post">Post</input>

Also, as pointed out in the comments, you could also just simply use your browser to open your RESTful urls.

Originally posted on Stack Overflow — 2 upvotes (accepted answer). Licensed under CC BY-SA.