Principle 4 – Resources can have multiple representations

A key feature of a resource is that it may be represented in a different format from the one in which it is stored. Thus, it can be requested or created in different representations. As long as the specified format is supported, the REST-enabled endpoint should use it. In the preceding example, we posted an XML representation of a watch item, but if the server had supported the JSON format, the following request would have been valid as well:

POST /categories/watches HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json
Host: www.mycatalog.com

{
  "watch": {
    "id": ""watch-abc"",
    "brand": "...",
    "price": {
      "-currency": "EUR",
      "#text": "100"
    }
  }
}
HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-Type: application/json
Location: http://mycatalog.com/categories/watches/watch-abc