Differences between REST and JSON APIs

Question

Wondering what the differences between REST and JSON APIs are, how you interface with them, and how to go about parsing the results. My goal is to build a small application for my android phone to tell me when the next train will get to the subway station by my house, using the developer API provided by the transit agency.

I'm learning C++ in university, but hope to go about this in Java. I'm sorry if this is more of a discussion question rather than a black and white answer question, but I can't find any information elsewhere.

APIs in Question

Solution

Very first thing to mention, JSON is not an API but a data format webservices and programs use to communicate to each other.

Webservices can be of many forms but most popular are REST and SOAP. Webservices give you a way to interact with remote machines and communicate with them.

To read more about Json, visit http://www.json.org/ , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Json

And to read more about Webservices, visit, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webservices