4 Kauri concepts

This documents gives an overview of the core concepts and technologies provided by Kauri. See Getting started for a practical guide to start using Kauri.

Kauri is a web application framework. See wikipedia in case you don't know what a web application or a framework is.

4.1 Adhering to Web architecture

Kauri does not try to work around the constraints imposed by the Web, but embraces them. Kauri wants you to think about resources, URIs, correct use of the HTTP methods, response codes, caching, and so on. In one word, it supports RESTful development. Or if you prefer, ROA and WOA.

For this reason, Kauri does not use the classic Servlet API, but the Restlet API. Many things in Restlet will be familiar for Servlet developers: it is still about requests and responses. But at a more detailed level, its design matches better with REST and HTTP concepts. This in turn will help you to write better Web applications.

Kauri, like Restlet, does not have sessions as known in the Servlet world. Things that you might have traditionally stored in sessions, can often be rethought as resource state, kept in the client, or else stored as (preferably client-controlled) temporary resources.