REST in Microservices

REST is one of the most widely used approaches for communication between microservices. It is simple, familiar, and built on HTTP, making it easy for services written in different programming languages to communicate with each other.

For example, imagine an e-commerce application with separate services for orders, inventory, payments, and customers. When a customer places an order, the Order Service might need to retrieve customer information, check product availability, and initiate payment processing.

One way to implement these interactions is through REST APIs. Each service exposes HTTP endpoints that other services can call without knowing anything about its internal implementation.

However, using REST effectively in microservices involves more than creating endpoints. We also need to consider service boundaries, network failures, latency, security, and API evolution. Let's understand how REST fits into a microservices architecture and the practical design decisions that matter.