Monday, December 13, 2021

Top 5 Courses to Learn RESTful Web Services in Java with Spring for Experienced Developers in 2024

In the last article, I have shared some courses to learn Microservice development with the Spring framework, and today, I'll talk about RESTful web service developments. The REST API and RESTful Web Services need no introduction, it's everywhere now and driving a new internet revolution. Most of the software development in the web space now also involves REST APIs. Gone are the days where the only interface for a web application was the browser, now most of them support REST APIs, which allows them to be accessible on any device like mobile devices, tablets, apple watches, and any other digital gadgets. It doesn't matter whether you are working for software giants like Amazon, Facebook, or Google or working with startups like Uber or Netflix, REST APIs are everywhere.

When it comes to developing REST APIs in Java, there are a lot of choices available like you can use JAX-RS based frameworks like Restlet and Jersey, or you can use the Spring framework.

I personally like Spring for developing RESTful web services because it has got excellent support for developing RESTful web services and I can also use my existing knowledge of Spring MVC to develop RESTful web services.

Btw, I have also blogged about my reasons for using Spring for REST development and you can find more reasons here.

In this article, I am going to share some of the best courses to learn REST API development in the Java world using Spring. These courses not only teach you to a step-by-step guide to write your own REST APIs as well as consume from public APIs offered by Facebook, Twitter, Uber, and other companies.

They will also teach you advanced concepts like the security of your REST API, versioning, filtering, pagination, and handling errors. By going through these courses you will have enough knowledge to not only develop RESTful web services but also design REST APIs for real-world applications.





5 Best Online Course to learn REST with Spring and Java in 2024

Here is my list of courses to learn REST with Spring and Java. The list contains some of the best courses to learn both designing REST APIs as well as developing them using Spring frameworks like Spring MVC and Spring Boot.

1. REST API Design, Development & Management

In order to develop a successful RESTful web service, you must first understand what is a REST API itself and how it works. This course provides the best overview of the REST API I have ever seen.

This REST online training course is both comprehensive and full of real-world examples where the author walks you through real-world REST APIs exposed by Twitter, Facebook, Uber, Netflix, and other companies to explain concepts and best practices.

The course is divided into 5 main sections. In the first part, you will learn REST API concepts which will cover the foundational concepts such as the evolution of RESTful API and the 6 architectural constraints.

In the second section, you will learn how to design the REST API. This is a really useful section where you will learn about best practices for designing the REST API. The author will walk you through some of the popular API providers (E.g., Twitter, Facebook, Uber, etc) and show you how they have designed their REST API.

Here in this section, you will learn about Resources, CRUD implementation Error Handling, HTTP status codes, Versioning, Pagination, Partial responses, etc.



In the next section, the author explains how to secure the REST API. In this section, you will learn about the commonly adopted Authentication and Authorization schemes used for REST API e.g, Tokens (Jason Web Tokens or JWT), Key/Secret, and OAuth 2.0 (Using Spotify implementation as a reference).

In the last two sections, you will learn about Swagger 2.0 / Open API Initiative specifications and API Management, the process of publishing, documenting, and overseeing application programming interfaces (APIs) in a secure, scalable environment.

In short, one of the best online courses to get the conceptual and practical knowledge of REST API. It's not about coding from scratch but building the concept before coding.

Top 5 RESTful Web Services with Spring and Java Courses for Experienced Developers




2. REST with Spring Certification Class 

If the previous course is the best course to learn about REST API concepts this is the best course to implement RESTful APIs using the Spring framework.

It's one of the comprehensive course which is divided into several modules covering all aspects of developing RESTful web services like the basics of REST with Spring, REST and HTTP fundamentals, simple security for REST API, Consuming the API from Angular JS, Testing the REST API using curl and Rest Assured.

It also covers the advanced concept of REST API security using OAuth2 & JWT, Documenting, Discovering, and Evolving the REST API like using Swagger and HATEOAS.

The course also teaches you some practical stuff with respect to Monitoring REST API and API Metrics, DevOps, and CI stuff like setting up a simple Jenkins pipeline from scratch and advanced API tactics.

Top 5 RESTful Web Services with Spring and Java Courses for Experienced Developers


Eugen is also working on introducing some new modules to take advantage of new features introduced in Spring 5 like building a reactive REST API, moving away from Servlet, and going to reactive, as well as covering new Spring 5 features and Spring MVC features.

In short, one of the best courses to join if you want to learn how to develop real-world RESTful APIs using Spring MVC from scratch.



3. Master Java Web Services and REST API with Spring Boot

This is another good course to learn about web services in Java, like both SOAP and REST as well as learn how to develop REST API using Spring Boot.

The course is divided into two parts, the first part covers RESTful Web Services and the second part is devoted to SOAP web services.

In the first part of this course, you will learn the basics of RESTful web services by developing resources for a sample social media application.

You will learn to implement these resources with multiple features - versioning, exception handling, documentation (Swagger), basic authentication (Spring Security), filtering, and HATEOAS. You will also learn the best practices in designing RESTful web services.

Master Java Web Services and REST API with Spring Boot


The course also explains all the tools and libraries you need for your RESTful API development e.g. You will be using Spring for dependency management, Spring MVC and Spring REST, Spring Boot, Spring Security for Authentication and Authorization, Spring Boot Actuator for Monitoring, Swagger for documentation), Maven for dependencies management, Eclipse for coding and development, Postman for testing REST Services and Tomcat as Embedded Web Server.

In the next part, you will learn about SOAP-based web services which you may ignore if you are only focused on RESTful web service but go through that realize what are the problems of SOAP which REST solves and help you to make a decision between SOAP and REST in future.




4. Create REST APIs using Spring Data REST

This is a great course to master the concepts of Microservices, REST, and Spring Data REST by developing a simple RESTful API using Spring Data REST.

Spring is the most widely used framework in the Java world and REST web services have become the standard way for application integration on the web, which makes learning both of them important for future web developers.

REST is also the defacto technology for Microservices communication, hence if you are moving towards Microservice architecture, a good knowledge of REST API and RESTful development will go a long way.

This course helps you master the concepts of micro-services, rest, and build an end to end application while exploring the various features of spring data rest. After finishing this course, you will have gained an understanding of Microservices, REST, HATEOAS, and Spring Data REST.

Create REST APIs using Spring Data REST




5. Master Microservices with Spring Boot and Spring Cloud

I first joined this course for learning Microservice but after finishing the first part, I realize that it's actually an awesome course to learn RESTful Web services as well.

As I said, the course is divided into two parts, the first part is about developing RESTful Web Services using Spring MVC and Spring Boot while the second part is about developing Microservices using Spring Cloud technology.

Software architectures are moving towards microservices and RESTful web services are the first step to developing great microservices, which makes this course useful for the developer who wants to learn both RESTful Web Services as well as Microservices.

In the second part of the course, you will learn the basics of Microservices. You will understand how to implement microservices using Spring Cloud, learn to establish communication between microservices, enable load balancing, scaling up and down of microservices, etc.

Master Microservices with Spring Boot and Spring Cloud

You will also learn to centralize the configuration of microservices with Spring Cloud Config Server, implement Eureka Naming Server, distribute tracing with Spring Cloud Sleuth and Zipkin, and develop fault-tolerant microservices with Zipkin.

That's all about some of the best courses to learn RESTful web services development using Java and Spring framework. As I have said, RESTful web services are very popular, and there are a lot of jobs out there that need Java developers with decent Spring and REST skills. These courses will help you to achieve that and you can use them to give your career a boost and keep yourself ahead of the competition.

Other Resources for Experienced Java Developers you may like to explore

Thanks a lot for reading this article so far. If you like these REST with Spring courses then please share them with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback then please drop a note.

P. S, - If you are new to Java and Spring world, particularly Spring Boot, then I also suggest you check out this list of free Spring Boot courses to start with. These are great courses to learn useful skills like Spring Boot which will help you to develop both REST APIs and Microservices in Java.

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