Can you explain the principle of REST and its main features?

REST (Representational State Transfer) is an architectural style for creating web services based on the use of standard HTTP methods and resources.

Main features of REST:

• Resources: everything is represented as resources with unique URIs.
• HTTP Methods: standard methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) are used for resource operations.
• Status Codes: the server returns HTTP codes to indicate the result of a request.
• Stateless: each request contains all necessary information; the server does not store client state.
• Caching: responses can be cached to improve performance.

Example: a GET request to /users/123 returns data for the user with id 123.

REST is widely used due to its simplicity, scalability, and compatibility with HTTP.