REST uses the GET verb to retrieve items of the specific resource type. Given that we have a lot of items, it is possible to retrieve a specific resource item and to retrieve all the available resource items. Retrieval of a specific resource item is generally done by providing the id of the item. The following shows the two forms of GET used for retrieval:

• /api/books: This returns a list of all books in the library
• /api/books/<id> : This returns information about a particular book in the library