REST stands for Representational State Transfer, which is an architectural style for designing web

services. RESTful web services use HTTP as the application protocol and support the standard HTTP

methods, such as GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE, to perform CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete)

operations on resources. Cisco DNA Center exposes its functionality through a set of RESTful APIs

that allow external applications to interact with the network controller and automate various

tasks. The RESTful architecture used within Cisco DNA Center has the following characteristics12:

It is simple, extensible, and secure to use. The APIs are based on open standards and use JSON as the

data format. The APIs also support HTTPS for secure communication and authentication.

It is stateless, meaning that each request contains all the information necessary to process it, and the

server does not store any session or client state. This improves scalability and performance of the

web services.

It is resource-oriented, meaning that each API endpoint represents a logical entity or a resource that

can be manipulated by the HTTP methods. For example, the /dna/intent/api/v1/network-

device endpoint represents the network devices resource, and the GET method can be used to

retrieve the list of network devices from Cisco DNA Center.

It is uniform, meaning that the same interface and conventions are used across all the APIs. For

example, the APIs use the same authentication mechanism, error handling, pagination, filtering, and

sorting parameters. Reference:

1: Introduction to Cisco DNA Center REST APIs - Cisco DevNet Learning Labs

2: Cisco DNA Center Platform User Guide, Release 2.2.3