What does 'REST' stand for in the context of API design?

In the context of API design, 'REST' stands for Representational State Transfer. This architectural style is crucial for designing networked applications, as it leverages the existing protocols of the web, primarily HTTP, to facilitate the communication between clients and servers.

Representational State Transfer emphasizes a stateless client-server interaction where the client sends requests to the server, and the server responds with representations of resources. These representations can take various forms, such as JSON or XML, allowing for flexible and structured data interchange.

The principles of REST dictate that resources are uniquely identified through URIs, and clients manipulate these resources using standard HTTP methods such as GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. This design promotes scalability, simplicity, and ease of integration, making it a widely adopted practice in web services and API development.