You can find REST Client Add-ons for most of the browsers. They propose a user friendly interface to generate, send REST requests and analyze the response. These are useful for punctual manual testing.

For example:

• Firefox : RESTClient, a debugger for RESTful web services
• Chrome : Advanced REST client

Let us use RESTClient to send requests to the basic REST service.

List all the resources

We would like a result in JSON format, so we set the Accept header accordingly.

The Response Headers tab shows a Status Code 200 OK, the Response Body tabs (not displayed here) show an empty list.

Create a resource

We send data in JSON format, so we set the Content-Type header accordingly.

We would like a result in JSON format, so we set the Accept header accordingly.

The create operation has generated a unique identifier for the resource.

Return a resource

We use the identifier previously generated to retrieve the resource.

We would like a result in JSON format, so we set the Accept header accordingly.

Update a resource

List all the resources

We get a list of resources with one element (the resource we updated previously).

Delete a resource

No data sent, no response body expected so no need to set headers.

The Response Headers tab shows a Status Code 204 No Content