REST has 6 constraints, the 6th constraint has 4 elements, the last of those four is a useless thing called HATEOAS. If you call your API REST, some zealots wi

REST has 6 constraints, the 6th constraint has 4 elements, the last of those four is a useless thing called HATEOAS. If you call your API REST, some zealots will open up your API and look if your beautiful response is polluted with any "links". If it is instead pristine, they will claim your API is not REST. It's really ridiculous, the links system is only barely useful in some GUI data exploration tools, that are not even that comfortable to use. If you use a JSON API that feels weirdly antiquated because of the superfluous fields, this is why. If you disregard HATEOAS basically every JSON API on the web is REST.