Question

I have some web services that I want to call. $resource or $http, which one should I use?

$resource: https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ngResource/service/$resource

$http: https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/service/$http

After I read the two above API pages I am lost.

Could you please explain to me in plain English what is the difference and in what situation should I use them? How do I structure these calls and read the results into js objects correctly?

Answer 1

$http is for general purpose AJAX. In most cases this is what you’ll be using. With $http you’re going to be making GET, POST, DELETE type calls manually and processing the objects they return on your own.

$resource wraps $http for use in RESTful web API scenarios.

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Speaking VERY generally: A RESTful web service will be a service with one endpoint for a data type that does different things with that data type based on HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc. So with a $resource, you can call a GET to get the resource as a JavaScript object, then alter it and send it back with a POST, or even delete it with DELETE.

… if that makes sense.