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

REST API (Representational State Transfer) is an architectural style for creating web services that uses standard HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) to interact with resources. Main features:

• Client-server architecture: clients and servers are separated and communicate through requests and responses.
• Stateless: each client request contains all the necessary information; the server does not store state between requests.
• Cacheability: responses can be cached to improve performance.
• Uniform interface: standardized methods and data formats (usually JSON).

Example of a request to get a list of users:

GET /users HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Accept: application/json

Response:

[
  {"id":1, "name":"Ivan"},
  {"id":2, "name":"Maria"}
]