10 Best Java Web Services [REST + SOAP] Courses for Beginners to Learn Online in 2023

My favorite online course to learn how to develop RESTful web services in Java using Spring, JAX-RS, and other frameworks.

Hello guys, if you want to learn about API, Web Services, and how to design and develop REST and SOAP Web services in Java then you have come to the right place. Earlier, I have shared the best courses to learn Microservice with Java and Spring framework, and today, I’ll talk about Java web service developments, both SOAP and REST but mainly REST.

The REST API and RESTful Web Services need no introduction, it’s everywhere now and driving a new internet revolution. Most of the software development in the webspace now also involves REST APIs.

Gone are the days where the only interface for a web application was the browser, now most of them support REST APIs, which allows them to be accessible on any device like mobile devices, tablets, apple watch, and any other digital gadgets.

It doesn’t matter whether you are working for software giants like Amazon, Facebook, or Google or working with startups like Uber or Netflix, REST APIs are everywhere.

When it comes to developing REST APIs in Java, there are a lot of choices available like you can use JAX-RS-based frameworks like Restlet and Jersey, or you can use the ever-present and popular Spring framework.

I personally like Spring for developing RESTful web services because it has got excellent support for developing RESTful web services and I can also use my existing knowledge of Spring MVC to develop RESTful web services.

I have also blogged about my reasons for using Spring for REST development and you can find more reasons here.

In this article, I am going to share some of the best courses to learn REST API development in the Java world using Spring. These courses not only teach you to a step-by-step guide to write your own REST APIs as well as consume from public APIs offered by Facebook, Twitter, Uber, and other companies.

They will also teach you advanced concepts like the security of your REST API, versioning, filtering, pagination, and handling errors. By going through these courses you will have enough knowledge to not only develop RESTful web services but also design REST APIs for real-world applications.

10 Best Online Courses to learn Java Web Services with Spring in 2023

Here is my list of courses to learn REST with Spring and Java. The list contains some of the best courses to learn both designing REST APIs as well as developing them using Spring frameworks like Spring MVC and Spring Boot.

1. REST API Design, Development & Management

In order to develop a successful RESTful web service, you must first understand what is a REST API itself and how it works. This course provides the best overview of the REST API I have ever seen.

The course is both comprehensive and full of real-world examples where the author walks you through real-world REST APIs exposed by Twitter, Facebook, Uber, Netflix, and other companies to explain concepts and best practices.

The course is divided into 5 main sections. In the first part, you will learn REST API concepts which will cover the foundational concepts such as the evolution of RESTful API and the 6 architectural constraints.

In the second section, you will learn how to design the REST API. This is a really useful section where you will learn about best practices for designing the REST API. The Instructor will walk you through some of the popular API providers (for example — Twitter, Facebook, Uber, etc) and show you how they have designed their REST API. You will learn about Resources, CRUD implementation Error Handling, HTTP status codes, Versioning, Pagination, Partial responses, etc.

In the next section, the instructor explains how to secure the REST API. In this section, you will learn about the commonly adopted Authentication and Authorization schemes used for REST APIs like Tokens (JSON Web Tokens or JWT), Key/Secret, and OAuth 2.0 (Using Spotify implementation as a reference).

In the last two sections, you will learn about Swagger 2.0 / Open API Initiative specifications and API Management, the process of publishing, documenting and overseeing application programming interfaces (APIs) in a secure, scalable environment.

In short, one of the best online courses to get the conceptual and practical knowledge of REST API. It’s not about coding from scratch but building the concept before coding.

Here is the link to join this course — REST API Design, Development & Management

2. REST with Spring Certification Class

If the previous course is the best course to learn about REST API concepts this is the best course to implement RESTful APIs using the Spring framework.

It’s one of the comprehensive course which is divided into several modules covering all aspects of developing RESTful web services like the basics of REST with Spring, REST and HTTP fundamentals, simple security for REST API, Consuming the API from Angular JS, Testing the REST API using curl and Rest Assured.

It also covers the advanced concept of REST API security using OAuth2 & JWT, Documenting, Discovering, and Evolving the REST API like using Swagger and HATEOAS.

The course also teaches you some practical stuff with respect to Monitoring REST API and API Metrics, DevOps, and CI stuff like setting up a simple Jenkins pipeline from scratch and advanced API tactics.

Eugen is also working on introducing some new modules to take advantage of new features introduced in Spring 5 like building a reactive REST API, moving away from Servlet, and going to reactive, as well as covering new Spring 5 features and Spring MVC features.

In short, one of the best courses to join if you want to learn how to develop real-world RESTful APIs using Spring MVC from scratch.

Here is the link to join this course — REST with Spring Certification Class

3. Master Java Web Services and REST API with Spring Boot

This is another good course to learn about web services in Java, like both SOAP and REST as well as learn how to develop REST API using Spring Boot.

Created by In28Minutes and Ranga Karnam, one of the most popular Udemy instructors for Java technologies, the course is divided into two parts, the first part covers RESTful Web Services and the second part is devoted to SOAP web services.

In the first part of this course, you will learn the basics of RESTful web services by developing resources for a sample social media application.

You will learn to implement these resources with multiple features — versioning, exception handling, documentation (Swagger), basic authentication (Spring Security), filtering, and HATEOAS. You will also learn the best practices in designing RESTful web services.

The course also explains all the tools and libraries you need for your RESTful API development like you will be using Spring for dependency management, Spring MVC and Spring REST, Spring Boot, Spring Security for Authentication and Authorization, Spring Boot Actuator for Monitoring, Swagger for documentation), Maven for dependencies management, Eclipse for coding and development, Postman for testing REST Services and Tomcat as Embedded Web Server.

In the next part, you will learn about SOAP-based web services which you may ignore if you are only focused on RESTful web service but go through that to realize what are the problems of SOAP which REST solves and help you to make a decision between SOAP and REST in future.

Here is the link to join this course — Master Java Web Services and REST API with Spring Boot

4. Create REST APIs using Spring Data REST

This is a great course to master the concepts of Microservices, REST, and Spring Data REST by developing a simple RESTful API using Spring Data REST.

Spring is the most widely used framework in the Java world and REST web services have become the standard way for application integration on the web, which makes learning both of them important for future web developers.

REST is also the defacto technology for Microservices communication, hence if you are moving towards Microservice architecture, a good knowledge of REST API and RESTful development will go a long way.

Created by Bharat ThippiReaddy, this course helps you master the concepts of micro-services, rest, and build an end-to-end application while exploring the various features of spring data rest. After finishing this course, you will have gained an understanding of Microservices, REST, HATEOAS, and Spring Data REST.

Here is the link to join this course — Create REST APIs using Spring Data REST

5. Master Microservices with Spring Boot and Spring Cloud

I first joined this course for learning Microservice but after finishing the first part, I realized that it’s actually an awesome course to learn RESTful Web services as well, interestingly this one is also created by In28Minutes, instructor of the third course in this list.

As I said, the course is divided into two parts, the first part is about developing RESTful Web Services using Spring MVC and Spring Boot while the second part is about developing Microservices using Spring Cloud technology.

Software architectures are moving towards microservices and RESTful web services are the first step to developing great microservices, which makes this course useful for the developer who wants to learn both RESTful Web Services as well as Microservices.

In the second part of the course, you will learn the basics of Microservices. You will understand how to implement microservices using Spring Cloud, learn to establish communication between microservices, enable load balancing, scaling up and down of microservices, etc.

You will also learn to centralize the configuration of microservices with Spring Cloud Config Server, implement Eureka Naming Server, distributed tracing with Spring Cloud Sleuth and Zipkin, and developing fault-tolerant microservices with Zipkin.

Here is the link to join this course — Master Microservices with Spring Boot and Spring Cloud

6. RESTful Web Services, Java, Spring Boot, Spring MVC, and JPA

This is another awesome cours to learn about RESTFul web services in Java using Spring toolsets like Spring MVC, Hibernate, and JPA. You will learn about how to implement API calls, sign-up, sign-in, email verification, password reset, update, delete as well as how to deploy to Amazon AWS Cloud.

Here are key things you will learn in this course:

• How to build a RESTful Web Service with Spring MVC and Spring Boot
• how to implement User Signup and Sign-in functionality
• How to secure RESTful Web Service with Spring Security Framework
• How to implement Token-Based Authentication
• How to implement Password Reset and Email Verification features
• How to use Spring Data JPA Query Methods
• How to download and Install Spring Tool Suite
• Create a new project using Spring Tool Suite and Spring Initializer
• How to download, run and stop Apache Tomcat

Along with that, you will also learn how to use JUnit 5 to test your code and how to use one of the most popular test frameworks called Rest Assured to test RESTful Web Service endpoints of your REST API.

Here is the link to join this course — RESTful Web Services, Java, Spring Boot, Spring MVC, and JPA

7. Mastery in Java Web Services and RESTful API with SpringBoot

This is another amazing Udemy course to learn about how to design and develop SOAP and RESTful web services with Spring Boot. If you are a complete beginner on Java web services then this is a great course to start with.

Here are things you will learn in this course:

1. How to implement application-level Exception Handling, entity validation, HATEOAS, and Filtering for RESTful Web Services.
2. How to use Spring Annotations — @Autowired, @Component, @Service, @Repository, @Configuration, @Primary
3. Understand WSDL definition, SOAP — Header, Body, Fault, XSD, JAXB Classes, and WSDL EndPoint

Along the way, you will also learn Spring, Spring Boot, JPA, REST API, and web services from a Java developer perspective. This is also an up-to-date course and more than 25,000 students have already joined this course.

Here is the link to join this course — Mastery in Java Web Services and RESTful API with Spring Boot

8. REST Fundamentals [Pluralsight]

This is one of the basic cours to learn about REST API from Pluralsight. If you are a complete beginner into REST APIs and not familiar with REST concepts like resources, endpoints, etc then this course is for you.

In this Pluralsight REST course, you’ll learn how to design and implement systems that follow the architectural style, known as representational state transfer (REST).

You will not only learn the history and theory behind the style and the vocabulary that you can use to describe its different elements but you’ll also discover an iterative process for creating a RESTful system by following along with the design and construction of a sample application.

Finally, you’ll explore where REST fits in the current landscape of distributed systems and cloud computing.

After completing this course, you’ll have the knowledge to evaluate REST for your project and you’ll have the skills to design and implement a RESTful system if it’s a good fit.

Here is the link to join this course — REST Fundamentals

By the way, you would need a Pluralsight membership to join this course which costs around $29 per month or $299 per year (14% discount). I highly recommend this subscription to all programmers as it provides instant access to more than 7000+ online courses to learn any tech skill. Alternatively, you can also use their 10-day-free-trial to watch this course for FREE.

Pluralsight | Personal Free Trial

9. API and Web Service Introduction [Udemy]

This is another great course for beginners who are not familiar with APIs and Web Services. In this Udemy course, you will learn about API, Web Services using REST, JSON, XML, HTTP, SOAP, OAuth, OpenID Connect, Postman, and Python.

This course includes the BIG PICTURE, with all the essential components of APIs that you need to know about. Topics covered include API (of course), Web Service, JSON, XML, HTTP, REST, SOAP, OAuth, OpenID Connect. Examples in Postman, Python, Amazon Web Services, Twitter, eBay, and Google Clou and it has plenty of exercises so you can solidify what you’ve learned!

For Beginners who need to understand what is API and the power of API in developing a modern application, this course is really a great resource.

Here is the link to join this course — API and Web Service Introduction

That’s all about some of the best courses to learn RESTful web services development using Java and Spring framework. As I have said, RESTful web services are very popular, and there are a lot of jobs out there that need Java developers with decent Spring and REST skills.

These courses will help you to achieve that and you can use them to give your career a boost and keep yourself ahead of the competition.

Other Resources for Experienced Java Developers you may like to explore

• 5 Free Spring Framework Courses for Java Developers
• 5 Courses to Learn Hibernate and JPA
• Top 5 Java design patterns courses for experienced Java devs
• My favorite course to learn Software Architecture
• Why Every Developer should learn Docker in 2023
• 5 Courses to Learn Node.js for Java developers
• 5 Free Angular Courses for Java Programmers
• 10 AWS, GCP, and Azure Certification to Aim in 2023
• 5 Courses to Learn Web Development in 2023
• 7 Free Online Courses to learn Microservices in Java
• 10 Advance Spring Boot Courses for Java Developers

Thanks a lot for reading this article so far. If you like these best Java web services and REST with Spring courses then please share them with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback then please drop a note.

P. S. — If you are new to Java and Spring world, particularly Spring Boot, then I also suggest you check out Spring & Hibernate for Beginners (includes Spring Boot) course to start with. This single course will teach you 3 essential Java framework.

Learn Hibernate and Spring (As A Total Beginner) Tutorial