Introduction
Latest update of this guide on: 2026-09-28 (changelog)
This style guide for RESTful services is a collaborative effort by several Belgian government institutions, originally under the G-Cloud umbrella, before moving to Belgif, the Belgian Interoperability Framework. Its goal is to improve compatibility between RESTful services offered by government institutions or any other organization adopting these guidelines.
This guide is a living document, updated when new interoperability issues arise or when REST-related standards evolve. All changes are reviewed by the REST design workgroup, in which the Belgian government organizations are represented. If you find errors or omissions, or want to contribute, you can open an issue or pull request on GitHub.
These Belgif resources may also be useful when developing RESTful webservices:
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OpenAPI documents for common definitions can be found in the openapi-* GitHub repositories.
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The belgif-rest-guide-validator validates compliance of OpenAPI documents to this guide.
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The belgif-rest-problem-java library can be used to implement error handling in Java REST clients and server implementations, using standardized Problem messages.
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Semantics of common business data (e.g. social security number, address, …) are maintained by the REST Functional Working Group in the Belgif FedVoc repository.
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Securing REST APIs. Guidelines are under development by the REST Security Working Group, based on the OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0 standards.
Links
Organizations that endorse the Belgif REST guidelines
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Contact rest-styleguide@gcloud.belgium.be if you would like to see your organization listed here. |
License
This work is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.Third-party components included in the generated site are listed in Third-party Notices.
Conformance