title: Can a restful api return a page as a response?
body: <p>I understand that an api is an application programming interface meaning it’s the interface between two or more programs or applications and it allows for communication across them through requests and responses.</p>
  
  <p>Usually when people say api they think of a third party api such as one to get the weather or currency exchange and those usually will return data in JSON or XML and what not. However correct me if I’m wrong but how the client or front end interacts with the server or backend is also considered an api right? For instance when I submit a form on my webapp as a get request the url will change adding the parameters and basically my api for my web app or server will handle specific url or api endpoints and will return a response like rendering a webpage or returning a view. </p>
  
  <p>My question is, is my understanding of this correct and if this way of interacting between my frontend and backend of my web app is considered an api and supposing it conforms with the RESTful constraints is it considered restful despite the fact that it doesn’t return raw data like in JSON and rather renders a webpage with html css JavaScript as a response? Or is it only a RESTful api if it conforms with the constraints and only returns raw JSON or similar data formats as most third party APIs for external use do?</p>