Representational State Transfer (RESTful) is the concept of fetching data from meaningful and semantic addresses, usually in the form of URL addresses on the internet, regardless of the actual structure of the server's directories.
For example, if I wanted to request music from a music website using RESTful principles, the request might look something like this:
This request is meaningful to humans both in its literal content and its structure. It includes a domain, a music artist, an album by that artist, and a specific song from that album. While this makes for a user-friendly address, it also means that the server may need to do additional work to fulfill the request compared to a more straightforward location within its directory structure.
To describe a JSON request as RESTful implies that the request itself is meaningful and that the requested content will be returned in the form of a JSON data object.