[rabbitmq-discuss] AMQP-RPC vs REST

Tue Oct 30 09:15:29 GMT 2012

On 10/29/2012 11:09 PM, Alexis Richardson wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 10:42 PM, Mark <static.void.dev at gmail.com> wrote:
>> For messaging and asych processing AMQP seeming to fit really well. For sync
>> processing though it seems like using simple HTTP to a RESTful service would
>> be easier than RPC over AMQP
>
> "It depends" :-)

Yes, it always does!

While I would think many cases would indeed be best implemented as 
RESTful services, especially where a 'resource oriented' view of the 
system felt natural, I myself would do so not because it is easier (I 
don't think it really is) but for the sake of uniformity.

One benefit of using AMQP even for a strict client-server, 
request-response style conversation, is that it makes it easy to 
introduce intermediaries to process/adapt the request and/or the 
response as the system evolves. You can also easily add in specialised 
processing for different classes of request.

Of course there is nothing that prevents you doing similar things with 
HTTP also, but in my opinion a brokered solution actually makes it 
easier; the available infrastructure does more of the hard work already.

Long running requests also fit quite well with the notion of explicit 
queuing, though again, I'm not implying that they can't be handled with 
HTTP.

This is all just a long-winded way of repeating what Alexis says above 
though!