REST API – Effective solutions to solve development issue involved in the SharePoint development

SharePoint is one of the most popular platforms which is highly used and several professionals and enterprises have built many applications using the SharePoint Object Model. SharePoint developers can easily able to develop Web parts and have access to the SharePoint’s Server-Side Object Model which allows developers to callSharePoint data and perform various operations.

The problem in the SharePoint 2010 version:

In SharePoint 2010, if developers want to customize or add new features to SharePoint, the only way is to install code which might be also untrusted directly into SharePoint's servers. However, sandbox solutions existed; the restrictions applied which forced SharePoint Developers to run even entrusted custom code, in full-trust mode.

There is an issue which rises when running fully trusted code in SharePoint 2010 as it might destabilize the entire farm and in this version it is challenge to migrate to newer versions of SharePoint. As the code made use of SSOM and ran as a part of SharePoint Processes, there are distinct change of high memory consumption and CPU utilization. So to manage the code well, it became an overhead for developers to know SSOM objects and utilize them appropriately to reduce memory allocation issues.

How REST API helps in SharePoint Programming?

In the SharePoint 2010, SOAP based web development services were provided for performing data operations, but finally it is SSOM that mostly used to create programs with SOAP. But, this lead to bulky data transfers. Because of this issue the new set of APIs introduced for developing SharePoint solutions which is known as a REST API.

In 2010 version of the SharePoint developers were provided with Client Side Object Model which gives them an ability of accessing SharePoint functionality in the remote client applications like sliver light.

The protocols that used by CSOM used to talk to SharePoint are XML and JSON so that other systems can also make HTTP requests to the SharePoint Data. But, one limitation of this feature is that it has provided API support for SharePoint based Sites, Lists and Documents.

Improvement given in the SharePoint 2013 version:

But, In the SharePoint 2013, a new API support has been added along with the already exist one SharePoint 2010. This provides access to APIs in several forms, to help development of remote applications using REST for .NET as well as for working with frameworks other than .NET. With this new set of APIs, if developers want to use client applications not using managed code or Silverlight technology then they can consider the use of REST to read/write data from and to SharePoint.

The fact that this REST API not requires any type of reference to assembles and it allows developers to manage and limit the footprint of the web applications. It is certainly an important consideration especially when building mobile apps for Windows Phone developed using HTML and JavaScript. One of the biggest advantages of this API is that developer can use of JavaScript libraries like, jQuery, Knockout, Angular to develop SharePoint applications, using the skill sets that most developers are familiar.