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392 points _kush | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.243s | source
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murukesh_s ◴[] No.44394189[source]
Sometimes I wish we could have kept XML alive alongside JSON.. I miss the comments, CDATA etc, especially when you have to serialize complex state. I know there are alternatives to JSON like YAML but I felt XML was better than YAML. We adopted JSON for its simplicity but tried to retrofit schema and other things that made XML complex. Like we kind of reinvented JSON Schema, and ended up like what XSD did decades ago and still lacking a good alternative to XSLT..
replies(3): >>44394230 #>>44394613 #>>44394730 #
ahofmann ◴[] No.44394613[source]
I just had to explain to some newbies that SOAP is a protocol with rigid rules; REST is an architectural style with flexibility. The latter means that you have to work and document really well and consumers of the API need tools like Postman etc. to be even able to use the API. With SOAP, you get most of that for free.
replies(1): >>44396269 #
1. Kwpolska ◴[] No.44396269[source]
Postman is just a terrible GUI for making HTTP requests. Using a REST API can be as simple as `curl https://api.github.com/repos/torvalds/linux`, and you can even open that link in a browser. SOAP requires sending a ton of XML [0] - it is not very usable without a dedicated SOAP-aware tool.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP#Example_message_(encapsul...