What Is the Richardson Maturity Model (RMM)?
In this article, we take a look at the four types of REST APIs delineated by the Richardson Maturity Model, and what each of them means for your APIs.
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Join For FreeThe Richardson Maturity Model (RMM) is a model developed by Leonard Richardson that helps organize your REST APIs into four levels, described below.
The main reason for this model to exist is to foster the evolution of the REST APIs of some system with a constant concern for governance, sense of organization with retro-compatibility, and constant improvements, using all the characteristics available from the REST architecture style.
Levels of RMM
Level 0 ( Swamp of Pox) - you should have a service already exposing a resource via its URI using only one HTTP verb (usually GET or POST). In this phase, you only use HTTP as a transport system (think of it as an RPC using HTTP).
Level 1 (Resources) - in this level you talk directly with your resources, correctly defined, using the appropriate division for it. Examples:
- Resource 'hotel':
- Resource 'room' (from Hotel):
- services/hotel/1/rooms/all (or services/hotel/1/rooms) = should bring details of all rooms of the hotel with ID #1.
- services/hotel/1/room/1 = should bring details of the hotel room with ID #1 from hotel #01.
- Here the details of a hotel could be its location, how many stars it has, how many rooms, etc.
- Here details of the room could be the installation details, size, if it's occupied, etc.
Level 2 (HTTP Verbs) - you have a clear understanding of the semantics of HTTP verbs and can now map your service operations using HTTP verbs accordingly, using GET, POST, DELETE, PUT (most common verbs used in this Level), standardizing your access to your service's resources.
Level 3 (Multimedia) - you now can extract the maximum benefit from the HTTP protocol and services resources using Multimedia (HATEOAS). This level the API should help with the discoverability of all resources associated with the payload requested, via links available within the payload itself.
This model is heavily used with Microservices Architecture Style once you need to expose your services via on a standardized, easy-to-maintain, and organized API.
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Thank you very much for the reading.
For more information, please check: Richardson Maturity Model
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