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Practice 1

A REST API is an interface that allows interaction with RESTful web services, enabling clients to request and modify resources. Swagger is a tool that describes API structures for automated documentation and client library generation, adhering to the OpenAPI Specification. Various file transfer protocols like FTP, SFTP, and SCP, along with secure communication layers such as SSH and TLS, are essential for secure data transfer, though terminology can often be confusing.

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5 views

Practice 1

A REST API is an interface that allows interaction with RESTful web services, enabling clients to request and modify resources. Swagger is a tool that describes API structures for automated documentation and client library generation, adhering to the OpenAPI Specification. Various file transfer protocols like FTP, SFTP, and SCP, along with secure communication layers such as SSH and TLS, are essential for secure data transfer, though terminology can often be confusing.

Uploaded by

Danny GH
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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PRACTICE ONE

What is a REST API?

• A REST API (also known as RESTful API) is an application programming


interface (API or web API) that conforms to the constraints of REST
architectural style and allows for interaction with RESTful web
services. REST stands for representational state transfer and was created
by computer scientist Roy Fielding.
• REST APIs work by fielding requests for a resource and returning all
relevant information about the resource, translated into a format that
clients can easily interpret (this format is determined by the API
receiving requests). Clients can also modify items on the server and even
add new items to the server through a REST API.

What Is Swagger?
• Swagger allows you to describe the structure of your APIs so that
machines can read them. The ability of APIs to describe their own structure
is the root of all awesomeness in Swagger. Well, by reading your API’s
structure, we can automatically build beautiful and interactive API
documentation. We can also automatically generate client libraries for your
API in many languages and explore other possibilities like automated testing.
Swagger does this by asking your API to return a YAML or JSON that
contains a detailed description of your entire API. This file is essentially a
resource listing of your API which adheres to OpenAPI Specification. The
specification asks you to include information like:
• What are all the operations that your API supports?
• What are your API’s parameters and what does it return?
• Does your API need some authorization?
Communication protocols
Basically, there are the following file transfer protocols around:
• FTP - the plain old FTP protocol that has been around since 1970s. The acronym
stands for "File Transfer Protocol". It usually runs over TCP port 21.
• SFTP - another, completely different file transfer protocol that has nothing to do
with FTP. SFTP runs over an SSH session, usually on TCP port 22. It has been
around since late 1990s. The acronym actually stands for "SSH File Transfer
Protocol".
• SCP - a variant of BSD rcp utility that transfers files over SSH session. The SCP
protocol has been mostly superseded by the more comprehensive SFTP protocol
and some implementations of the "scp" utility actually use SFTP instead.
Secure communication layers
Additionally, there are the following two secure communication layers:
• SSH - a protocol that allows establishing a secure channel between
the local and the remote computer. Serves as an underlying channel
for associated protocols such as secure shell, port forwarding, SFTP
or SCP. While it is possible to run the (slightly modified) plain old
FTP protocol over SSH, this is not very common, fortunately. File
transfer over SSH is nearly always done using SFTP or SCP.
• TLS - this is almost generally known primarily by its old name - SSL -
and provides a way of securing otherwise unsecure protocols such
as HTTP, SMTP, POP3 or FTP. Please note that SSL 3.1 is called TLS
1.0, and therefore TLS 1.0 is a newer version of the protocol than
SSL 3.0, despite the lower version number. HTTP over SSL is often
called HTTPS, and FTP over SSL is often called FTPS and has two
variants, explicit (starts as an unencrypted FTP session and is
secured on client request) and implicit (is secured right from the
beginning and therefore needs a separate TCP port, usually 990).
The implicit mode is deprecated, but still widely used.
Secure file transfer protocols, or fitting it all together
• In an ideal world, the information above should be just enough.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. The file transfer protocols are
also referred to by other names, and even the names that only refer
to a one single protocol are often mistakenly used for the wrong
protocol by (understandably) confused authors.
• FTP - should be only used for the plain old FTP protocol.
• SFTP - should be only used for SFTP, the SSH file transfer protocol.
However, people often shorten Secure FTP into SFTP - this is not
correct, because the S in SFTP does not stand for Secure, but for
SSH.
• SFTP2 - this confusing name is used by some vendors to highlight
the obvious fact that their SFTP protocol runs over SSH2. For all
practical purposes, consider this to be a synonym of SFTP, because
SSH1 has been deprecated for many years.
• Secure FTP - this name is the most confusing, because it is used to
refer to either of the two different protocols. Whenever this name is
used, it is necessary to specify whether the SSH-based or SSL-based
file transfer protocol is meant.

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