Which types of data are supported by REST services?

REST (Representational State Transfer) services are designed to facilitate the transfer and manipulation of data over the web in a standardized manner. The primary formats used for data exchange in RESTful services are JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) and XML (eXtensible Markup Language).

JSON is lightweight and easily readable, making it suitable for web applications, especially in environments where performance and bandwidth efficiency are critical. Its structure aligns closely with object-oriented programming languages, making it a popular choice among developers.

XML, on the other hand, offers a more verbose markup format, which allows for more complex data structures and supports attributes. While XML is being used less frequently in modern web technologies due to the rise of JSON, it remains a standard format supported by many REST services for backward compatibility and for scenarios requiring rich metadata.

The other options include formats like HTML and CSV, which are not typically used as primary data formats in REST APIs. HTML is primarily for rendering web pages, while CSV is more suitable for tabular data representation but lacks the hierarchical structure offered by JSON and XML. PDF is a document format that is neither designed for data interchange in APIs nor structured for easy parsing and manipulation in programming contexts. Plain text, while simple, doesn't offer a structured