Rating:  - nice book
I received this book in three days, which was a fast delivery. I am still working on this book, but I must say I like this book.
Rating:  - Solid Coverage of An Important Platform
Useful not just as a guide to working with web services but also provides a solid overview of what constitutes a good computing platform in general. Restful web services are more important and useful than most people realize but this book provides an immediate update for anyone working in computing.
Rating: - Lots of information... Very great book
It took a while before I decided to read this book... Let me say... There's a lot of information that helped me understand various concepts... It's not just about REST... it's also about all the different architectures that make the Web we currently know and use. The Author explains and compares in details, giving lots of code examples in many languages. I personally code with Ruby on Rails, but it's not just about Rails, it's about Django, etc... (framework) and other programming languages than Ruby(Python, Java, etc...).
For the first time, I clearly understand how to create programs that can be read and understood by several MACHINES (computers) via the HTTP protocol...
This book goes as far as giving you tips on how to use your HTTP library to make your program be able to communicate with machines... I love it.
Rating:  - mainly for Ruby programmers
The title should be re-written RESTful web services for Ruby programmers. I didn't realize before buying the book (I bought it online) that almost all of the examples are in Ruby. I don't know Ruby very well, and I really would prefer more examples in Java and Java Script
Rating: - Brilliant and Horrible
Packed with all sorts of knowledge about REST, HTTP and AJAX this book will make you very capable at building well designed RESTful web services. Any topic imaginable is covered, from obscure ways of handling transactions, to Apache proxies, service implementations in Rails and the limitations of the current browser security model.
While this is all good and useful stuff, it also scatters the books focus, which eventually turns out to be its major problem. The topic orientation simply sucks. I would recommend reading the book in this order:
* Core knowledge
- Introduction, Chapter 1 and 3
- Chapter 4, 8, 9
- Optional: chap 10 (comparison to SOAP).
* REST service examples
- Chapter 5, 6 and 7
* REST clients
- Chapter 2 and 11
The service examples (chapter 5 - 7) should really have been one chapter. The client chapters does not show how to write clients against the provided example services, which is a major mistake. The core knowledge scattered throughout chapter 4, 8 and 9 (like the ATOM publishing protocol which is covered multiple places) should be collected and ordered.
So why the four starts ?. I have to admit that my annoyance with the books topical layout is trumped by the authors knowledge and their ability to pack a surprising number of usable facts into this book. So if you do not loose your way in their topical jungle then you will eventually come through as a REST maven.
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