RESTCONF and APIs

RESTCONF (RFC 8040) is an HTTP-based protocol for accessing network configuration and state data defined by YANG models. It brings the simplicity and familiarity of REST APIs to network management. Beyond RESTCONF, many network vendors and controllers offer their own REST APIs for automation.

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What is RESTCONF?

RESTCONF is essentially NETCONF over HTTP. It uses the same YANG data models but replaces XML-over-SSH with HTTP methods and JSON or XML encoding:

Feature	NETCONF	RESTCONF
Transport	SSH (port 830)	HTTPS (port 443)
Encoding	XML	JSON or XML
Operations	RPC-based	HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE)
URL structure	XPath / subtree filters	RESTful resource URIs
Tooling	ncclient (Python)	Any HTTP client (curl, requests, Postman)
Ease of use	Medium	High — familiar to web developers

HTTP Methods Mapping