 enabling web services what is a web service  a web service allows your site to provide its content and data to other web sites and applications typically the data is transported via http in a serialized machinereadable format what is serialization  serialization is the process of converting complex data structures into text strings so that they can be exchanged and stored the reverse process is called deserialization  json and xml are the two mostcommonlyused data serialization formats for web services what is http basic authentication  http basic authentication is a method for authenticating requests by sending a user name and password along with the request what modules provide web services  the following core software modules provide web services json api module exposes entities to other applications using a fully compliant implementation of the json api specification  see managing content structure for more information on content entities and fields restful web services module exposes entities and other resources to other applications using a rest implementation data is exchanged using a serialization format such as json and transferred using an authentication method such as http basic authentication serialization module provides a framework for adding specific serialization formats for other modules to use http basic authentication module provides a way for web services to be authenticated using http basic authentication against site user accounts there are also contributed modules that provide web services additional resources online documentation for the restful web services module online documentation for the json api module comparison of the restful web services and json api modules 