Drupal as backend for RESTful API?

Question

Are there any good write-ups on creating RESTful APIs with Drupal? I see the services API, which I guess is how it's done. What I'm looking for, I suppose is a comparison of drupal vs. other frameworks for that particular purpose.

Update - a bit more info:

In particular, I'm probably going to want to be returning json, and ideally using http request verbs (PUT, POST, GET, DELETE) properly with the common resource urls. I.e. http://mysite/api/widgets/1 (POST -> create, GET -> view, PUT -> update, DELETE -> delete) as opposed to http://mysite/api/widgets/1/delete

Answer 1

I cannot compare with other frameworks, but Service 3.x (that's version 3 of the Services module) provides a resource driven model for service with a REST backend (and an XML-RPC one). According to its documentation, you can create a new resource type quite easily (if you are familiar with Drupal) using a simple API as it takes care of JSON[P]/XML parsing and serialization.

Updated, prompted by David Eads' answer: I wouldn't start with Drupal and Services 3.x if the only end need is to build a RESTful service. They are not generic solution to build a data backend with a RESTful API. They should be used when what is needed is a CMS powered website exposing (parts of) its data through a RESTful API.

Answer 2

Drupal Services 3.0 makes creating REST services much easier than it was with the previous versions (2.x). Also Services 3.0 works with Drupal 6 and Drupal 7.