We currently have a SOAP based web service that our in house applications use to authenticate users. Basically, they send a SOAP request with the username and password. The web service authenticates their credentials against our data store and returns user information if the authentication is successful. The web service is secured using BASIC authentication and SSL.
We need to make modifications to this web service and I was considering re-writing it as a REST service. The REST services I have created in the past have been fairly simple and had no need for security. I have never created a REST service that used sensitive information, so I have a couple of questions / concerns:
First, is there a best practice for sending sensitive query parameters (user credentials) to a REST service securely? I can still use the BASIC authentication and SSL.
Second, if I send a query to a REST service using POST, is it still considered RESTful, or is GET required for REST queries?
You can use SSL and Basic authentication with REST web services as well.
HTTP GET is usually used for data retrieval (queries) but you can use HTTP POST as well. GET is especially useful if you can use any type of HTTP caching. POST is usefull if you need to transfer a lot of data to define your query or if your web service operation expects some complex data format instead of simple arguments.