REST vs SOAP vs GraphQL comparison in Rest API - Hands-On Comparison

Compare REST, SOAP, and GraphQL APIs

📖 Scenario: You are working as a junior developer in a company that uses different types of APIs. Your manager wants you to create a simple comparison of three popular API styles: REST, SOAP, and GraphQL. This will help the team understand their differences clearly.

🎯 Goal: Create a small program that stores key features of REST, SOAP, and GraphQL in a dictionary, then filters and displays the features of the API style chosen by the user.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary called api_features with keys 'REST', 'SOAP', and 'GraphQL', each holding a list of 3 features as strings.

Create a variable called selected_api and set it to one of the keys: 'REST', 'SOAP', or 'GraphQL'.

Use a for loop with variables feature to iterate over the list of features for the selected_api key in api_features.

Print each feature on a new line.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Understanding different API styles helps developers choose the right one for their projects and communicate clearly with teams.

💼 Career

Many software jobs require knowledge of REST, SOAP, and GraphQL to build or maintain web services and APIs.

1

Create the API features dictionary

Create a dictionary called api_features with these exact keys and values:
'REST' with features 'Uses HTTP methods', 'Stateless', 'JSON format';
'SOAP' with features 'Uses XML', 'Stateful or stateless', 'Built-in error handling';
'GraphQL' with features 'Single endpoint', 'Client specifies data', 'Strongly typed schema'.

Rest API

# Create the api_features dictionary with REST, SOAP, and GraphQL features
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a dictionary. Each key is a string and its value is a list of strings.

2

Set the selected API type

Create a variable called selected_api and set it to the string 'REST'.

Rest API

api_features = {
    'REST': ['Uses HTTP methods', 'Stateless', 'JSON format'],
    'SOAP': ['Uses XML', 'Stateful or stateless', 'Built-in error handling'],
    'GraphQL': ['Single endpoint', 'Client specifies data', 'Strongly typed schema']
}
# Set selected_api to 'REST'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the string 'REST' to the variable selected_api.

3

Loop through features of the selected API

Use a for loop with variable feature to iterate over api_features[selected_api].

Rest API

api_features = {
    'REST': ['Uses HTTP methods', 'Stateless', 'JSON format'],
    'SOAP': ['Uses XML', 'Stateful or stateless', 'Built-in error handling'],
    'GraphQL': ['Single endpoint', 'Client specifies data', 'Strongly typed schema']
}
selected_api = 'REST'
# Loop through features of the selected_api
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a for loop to go through each feature in the list for the selected API.

4

Print the features of the selected API

Print each feature inside the for loop to display the features of the selected_api.

Rest API

api_features = {
    'REST': ['Uses HTTP methods', 'Stateless', 'JSON format'],
    'SOAP': ['Uses XML', 'Stateful or stateless', 'Built-in error handling'],
    'GraphQL': ['Single endpoint', 'Client specifies data', 'Strongly typed schema']
}
selected_api = 'REST'
for feature in api_features[selected_api]:
    # Print each feature
    # Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(feature) inside the loop to show each feature on its own line.