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Register an implementation

The Restlet framework is composed of two main parts. First, there is the “Restlet API”, a neutral API supporting the concepts of REST and facilitating the handling of calls for both client-side and server-side applications. This API must be supported by a Restlet implementation before it can effectively be used. Multiple implementations could be provided (open source projects or commercial products).

This separation between the API and the implementation is similar to the one between the Servlet API and Web containers like Jetty or Tomcat, or between the JDBC API and concrete JDBC drivers. Currently, the “Restlet Engine” (NRE) is available and acts as the reference implementation. When you download the Restlet distribution, the API and the NRE come bundled together, ready to be used. If you need to use a different implementation just add the implementation JAR file to the classpath and remove the NRE JAR file named com.noelios.restlet.jar.

The registration is done automatically. See the JAR specification for details. When an implementation is loaded, it automatically calls back the org.restlet.util.Engine.setInstance() method.