What is a RESTful Web Service?

A RESTful Web Service is a type of web service that follows the principles of Representational State Transfer (REST) architecture. It is a way of designing web services that are scalable, flexible, and easy to maintain. RESTful web services use HTTP methods to perform operations on resources, which are identified by URIs. The resources can be represented in different formats such as JSON, XML, or HTML.

One of the key principles of RESTful web services is the separation of concerns between the client and the server. The server provides the resources, and the client interacts with them using HTTP methods such as GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. This separation of concerns allows for a more modular and flexible architecture, where changes to one component do not affect the others.

For example, let's say we have a RESTful web service that provides information about books. The client can use the HTTP GET method to retrieve a list of all books, or a specific book by its ID. The client can use the HTTP POST method to add a new book to the collection, or the HTTP PUT method to update an existing book. The client can use the HTTP DELETE method to remove a book from the collection.