What is the prefered method for a 'WSDL' for REST webservice?

Question

I have build plenty of SOAP webservices, but am building a REST webservice for a specific project, and I was wondering what people used for a 'WSDL' for REST services or if it is even needed.

Answer 1

You can try Swagger(now OpenAPI) which allows to describe REST services using a JSON open standard.

Answer 2

REST really only uses the HTTP verbs (GET,PUT,POST,DELETE) on a resource. All operations on a resource are supposed to be represented that way. POST is used as a catch all for when you can't express your business logic in a way that fits into the other three. That is why there isn't really a WSDL for a REST service since you only ever have 4 methods on the resource. Note that the Zend Framework REST library isn't really RESTful and is more of a plain old XML (POX) service.