I’ve contracted with O’Reilly to write a “RESTFul Java” book about REST, Java, and JAX-RS. Should be out sometime this summer.
Bill the Plumber
Software plumbing using middleware wrenches
My Last Book
Software plumbing using middleware wrenches
January 29, 2009
JAX-RS, REST, RESTEasy, Webservices 16 Comments
I’ve contracted with O’Reilly to write a “RESTFul Java” book about REST, Java, and JAX-RS. Should be out sometime this summer.
Bill the Plumber 
Jan 29, 2009 @ 16:46:52
Hi Bill,
Great news! Let me know if you need any help regarding Restlet coverage.
Cheers,
Jerome
Jan 29, 2009 @ 18:44:46
Would it be mostly about java frameworks ( like restlet ) to build restful services . Other than that I cannot see how rest and java are related . Congrats again.
Jan 29, 2009 @ 20:23:48
It is mostly (90%) a JAX-RS book.
Jan 30, 2009 @ 07:30:59
Bill,
Thanks for the precision. If it is a book limited to JAX-RS (which is fine in itself), do you really intend to title it “RESTFul Java”?
Regards,
Jerome
Jan 30, 2009 @ 20:14:24
Are you implying that JAX-RS isn’t RESTFul? 😉
Anyways, its something the publisher suggested.
Jan 31, 2009 @ 11:41:44
Hi Bill,
Well, you know I didn’t mean that. But implying that “RESTful Java” is all about JAX-RS would be as precise as implying that JAX-RS is the “REST API for Java” as it was initially titled.
I’m sure if you explain them, that O’Reilly wouldn’t like to hide from its readers that JAX-RS is just one technology among a few popular and RESTful ones in Java (ie. NetKernel, Project Zero and Restlet). It’s like writing a book on “Java and XML” where you would only cover the DOM API and not the SAX one.
I don’t think O’Reilly would force you to ignore older and popular alternatives such as Restlet (which does support JAX-RS as you know, but not just JAX-RS). This would be simply unfair. When I contributed to the “RESTful Web Services” book from O’Reilly, co-writing a part on Restlet, we did mention JSR-311/JAX-RS which had just started its specification effort.
Now, you know my position and I’m not the author. So I’ll let you decide and write what is the best from your point of view. I’ll make my final opinion when I get your book in my hands.
Best regards,
Jerome
Feb 04, 2009 @ 20:54:38
So how would this book be diffent from the “Restful Web Services” book by O’Reilly? I have been looking for a good “Rest” related book and the “Restful Web Services” books seems to be the most up-to-date based on the publication dates. I believe I did read that the examples were in Ruby or Rails, but the comments on Amazon indicated that people still thought that it was a good book to get a handle on REST.
Will the book have a ‘RESTEasy’ bent to it or stick mostly to JAX-RS?
Feb 05, 2009 @ 00:19:10
Mike,
Although it will over lap a little bit, my book should not compete with Restful Web Services. Restful Web Services is an awesome book. I highly recommend it to anyone. I did *HATE* that the examples were in Ruby.
Most of the book is going to be about JAX-RS. Like my EJB 3.0 book, there will be a workbook section that shows you how to run the examples in the book with RESTEasy, which is a certified JAX-RS implementation. Also, one chapters in the book will be “RESTFul Clients” and a good portion of that will walk through RESTEasy’s client framework as well as java.net.URL and Apache HTTP Client.
Feb 09, 2009 @ 21:17:23
Okay, so my next question is, If I only had time to read one book on REST, which should I read?
I know people may say “Read both!” but I am a slow reader and my list of ‘to reads’ is getting too long…
Feb 18, 2009 @ 17:51:01
Thank you!
I really need a good book for JAX-RS 🙂
Regards
Feb 27, 2009 @ 12:27:03
I agree. Restful Web Service is a wonderful book and I like the Ruby examples, but examples in other languages as a separate download would have been great.
@Bill: You can use JRuby to write some Ruby examples for your book 🙂
Claus
Jun 10, 2009 @ 12:47:34
Any latest news on a publication date yet?
Also, I hope that you start off with some very very basic examples in java, ie no complicating frameworks etc. Some of us are new to all this!
On the client side I’d be interested in seeing flex used as an example since that’s what I’m currently looking at.
Cheers.
Jun 10, 2009 @ 13:30:39
Publisher wants it out in September. I hope to make it for JBossWorld. Again, its mostly 95% going to be about JAX-RS. Whether its a complicated framework or not, I’ll let you decide.
Mar 09, 2011 @ 17:44:39
Hey Bill,
I love your bk and it helped me a lot to get things started.
Incidentally, while I was designing and developing parts of my system, I came across a standard issue where I need my system to read a bunch of static data from the Db into some “global” Java obj during startup so that when JAX-RS is servicing each HTTP request, it does not need to keep instantiating the same objs and populating them from the Db. They are mainly config data that *never* change but I want them to be read from the Db instead of encoding them in static data members.
Do you know of way or workaround for this issue?
Thanks!
—
Art
Mar 09, 2011 @ 21:53:14
You can manually create your JAX-RS service objects within an Application class. Alternatively you can preconfigure stuff within a Spring bean or EJB/CDI equivalent and reference it within your JAX-RS service.
Mar 09, 2011 @ 22:14:33
Thank you, Bill. CDI sounds about right. I’ll look into it and see it all fits into place.