Is it a REST web service? - web-services

Question

I am working on a legacy application which have a .war with following structure (and I want to add my servlet in this war)
myApp.war
- axis2-web (Downloaded from http://ws.apache.org/axis2/download/1_1/download.cgi)
- META-INF
-- MANIFEST.MF
- WEB-INF
-- classes (But it don't have any `.class` file , it have `log4j.properties` file)
-- conf (Contains `axis2.xml`)
-- lib (contains many jars)
-- modules
-- services (Some `.aar` files)
-- web.xml
Here is the web.xml file
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE web-app PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.3//EN" "http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd">
<web-app>
<display-name>Apache-Axis2</display-name>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>AxisServlet</servlet-name>
<display-name>Apache-Axis Servlet</display-name>
<servlet-class>
org.apache.axis2.transport.http.AxisServlet</servlet-class>
<!--<init-param>-->
<!--<param-name>axis2.xml.path</param-name>-->
<!--<param-value>/WEB-INF/conf/axis2.xml</param-value>-->
<!--<param-name>axis2.xml.url</param-name>-->
<!--<param-value>http://localhot/myrepo/axis2.xml</param-value>-->
<!--<param-name>axis2.repository.path</param-name>-->
<!--<param-value>/WEB-INF</param-value>-->
<!--<param-name>axis2.repository.url</param-name>-->
<!--<param-value>http://localhot/myrepo</param-value>-->
<!--</init-param>-->
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>AxisRESTServlet</servlet-name>
<display-name>Apache-Axis Servlet (REST)</display-name>
<servlet-class>
org.apache.axis2.transport.http.AxisRESTServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>AxisAdminServlet</servlet-name>
<display-name>Apache-Axis AxisAdmin Servlet (REST)</display-name>
<servlet-class>
org.apache.axis2.transport.http.AxisAdminServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>AxisRESTServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/rest/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>AxisServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/servlet/AxisServlet</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>AxisServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>*.jws</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>AxisServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/services/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>AxisAdminServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/axis2-admin/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<welcome-file-list>
<welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
<welcome-file>index.html</welcome-file>
<welcome-file>/axis2-web/index.jsp</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>
<error-page>
<error-code>404</error-code>
<location>/axis2-web/Error/error404.jsp</location>
</error-page>
<error-page>
<error-code>500</error-code>
<location>/axis2-web/Error/error500.jsp</location>
</error-page>
</web-app>
Is it a REST web service ? I Googled and found some tutorials on REST which says REST services have services.xml file but I couldn't find it in my application. I want to integrate my servlet in above war so what will be the right way to do it ?
PS: Please let me know if I am missing anything.

Answer 1

As I understand RESTFUL WS approach that the it has a traditional http request and response with get ,post ,put or delete operations directly passed to the web service and so the response doesn't have any special format (JSON-RPC,SOAP) .
For example , if we write simple code some-service.jsp and put this code on our server
the restful tells us to call the service using any http client passing it the required params
and then we will get the service response .
Now if your application meets this , it would be RESTful .
Note : there are no any specific implementation techniques for REST it is just a WS approach
hope this would help you