Representational state transfer (REST) or RESTful web services provide a way to exchange data between applications or systems on the Internet. RESTful web service also refers as RESTful API, uses HTTP request to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data across platforms. In present days, RESTful API is an essential component of the web application.

When the CodeIgniter application requires communicating with another application, RESTful API is needed to integrate into CodeIgniter. Using RESTful API in CodeIgniter, you can exchange data between different applications or platform. This tutorial shows RESTful server implementation for CodeIgniter and you will learn how to create RESTful web services in CodeIgniter.