[rest-practices] text/html representation?

[Bill Burke]

Bryan Kearney wrote:
> On 04/27/2010 04:23 PM, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
>> Hey,
>>
>> I was trying to think of some simple advice for people designing REST
>> APIs - things like "if you're documenting the URI scheme, it's not
>> HATEOAS"
> 
> This implies a level of maturity on the client which the tooling does 
> not help yet. I would put Hateoas as a goal to strive for, not a hard 
> requirement now.
> 

Not sure I agree with "not a hard requirement".  How would you feel if a 
naming service was not a hard requirement and you had to hard code IORs 
everywhere?  IMO, you at least need link templates, i.e.

<link rel="employee-template" href=".../employees/{emp-id}" .../>

If you ever want to change your URI schemes you're gonna have a hard 
time updating and supporting older clients.

-- 
Bill Burke
JBoss, a division of Red Hat
http://bill.burkecentral.com