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No, I haven't. JSON can be used as a hypermedia, and people have tried this, but it hasn't really worked out very much and the industry trend is against it, to

No, I haven't. JSON can be used as a hypermedia, and people have tried this, but it hasn't really worked out very much and the industry trend is against it, towards a more RPC-like approach. I'm using HTML as an example to demonstrate the uniform interface constraint of REST, and showing how this particular JSON (and, I claim with confidence, most extent JSON APIs) do not have a uniform interface. Which is fine: the uniform interface hasn't turned out to be as useful when it is consumed by code rather than humans. There are good examples of successful non-HTML hypermedias. One of my favorites is hyperview, a mobile hypermedia: https://hyperview.org/ https://hyperview.org/

wvenable 4y ago
I'm old enough to remember WML which was a mobile non-HTML hypermedia standard. I enjoyed using it but it was obvious putting an HTML browser on a phone was always going to win out. Hyperview isn't that interesting because it's a non-standard proprietary technology that isn't really "on the web". So you either have something like that, an actual full-featured HTML browser, or have something consuming a fully defined JSON API. It doesn't feel like there's anything interesting about non-HTML user agents on the web. HTML automatically makes them all irrelevant.
- recursivedoubts 4y ago
  hyperview is a hypermedia that exposes native mobile features directly within the hypermedia you wouldn't create an internet out of hyperview-apps, rather it is a way for you, a developer of a mobile application, to get the benefits of a hypermedia approach (e.g. versioning becoming much less of an issue, vs. app-store updates) while not giving up on native mobile behavior it is open source, and I think it's one of the most innovative uses of hypermedia I've seen in the last decade: https://github.com/instawork/hyperview https://github.com/instawork/hyperview
  - wvenable 4y ago
    It's an app builder not a hypermedia client. It's a pretty slight semantic difference but when we're talking about REST APIs for 3rd party clients then hyperview isn't really relevant to the discussion.
    - recursivedoubts 4y ago
      I don't see how you can say it isn't a hypermedia client: it is a client that interprets hypermedia, just like the canonical hypermedia client, a web browser. It's not an internet hypermedia client like a browser, with general access to a broad network of different sites/applications, but the core mechanic satisfies REST and the format being transferred is a hypermedia.
      - wvenable 4y ago
        Because it's doesn't have general access to a broad network of different sites/applications it's not a hypermedia client. It's a client for a single service that uses hypermedia is an implementation detail. An HTML client that can only view Facebook is not a browser, it's a Facebook client. The point of the article is about how REST should contain all the information needed to traverse a service. But hyperview is for a building a single client/server application where the developers always know the entire interface. So that is the way that it's irrelevant to the discussion.
        recursivedoubts 4y ago
        I dunno man, I don't see anything about "a broad network of different sites" requirement here: https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm#sec_5_1_7 https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arc... A hyperview-based application has the exact same defining characteristic of a RESTful web application: there is a single URL that is entered, and beyond that all actions are afforded through hypermedia controls. All the information needed to traverse the service is encoded in responses, and no knowledge of the entire interface is needed by the client. Seems relevant to me. I certainly agree it isn't a general purpose browser, but web browsers are only an instance of a hypermedia client, not the definition of one.

wvenable 4y ago

I'm old enough to remember WML which was a mobile non-HTML hypermedia standard. I enjoyed using it but it was obvious putting an HTML browser on a phone was always going to win out. Hyperview isn't that interesting because it's a non-standard proprietary technology that isn't really "on the web". So you either have something like that, an actual full-featured HTML browser, or have something consuming a fully defined JSON API. It doesn't feel like there's anything interesting about non-HTML user agents on the web. HTML automatically makes them all irrelevant.

recursivedoubts 4y ago
hyperview is a hypermedia that exposes native mobile features directly within the hypermedia you wouldn't create an internet out of hyperview-apps, rather it is a way for you, a developer of a mobile application, to get the benefits of a hypermedia approach (e.g. versioning becoming much less of an issue, vs. app-store updates) while not giving up on native mobile behavior it is open source, and I think it's one of the most innovative uses of hypermedia I've seen in the last decade: https://github.com/instawork/hyperview https://github.com/instawork/hyperview
- wvenable 4y ago
  It's an app builder not a hypermedia client. It's a pretty slight semantic difference but when we're talking about REST APIs for 3rd party clients then hyperview isn't really relevant to the discussion.
  - recursivedoubts 4y ago
    I don't see how you can say it isn't a hypermedia client: it is a client that interprets hypermedia, just like the canonical hypermedia client, a web browser. It's not an internet hypermedia client like a browser, with general access to a broad network of different sites/applications, but the core mechanic satisfies REST and the format being transferred is a hypermedia.
    - wvenable 4y ago
      Because it's doesn't have general access to a broad network of different sites/applications it's not a hypermedia client. It's a client for a single service that uses hypermedia is an implementation detail. An HTML client that can only view Facebook is not a browser, it's a Facebook client. The point of the article is about how REST should contain all the information needed to traverse a service. But hyperview is for a building a single client/server application where the developers always know the entire interface. So that is the way that it's irrelevant to the discussion.
      - recursivedoubts 4y ago
        I dunno man, I don't see anything about "a broad network of different sites" requirement here: https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm#sec_5_1_7 https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arc... A hyperview-based application has the exact same defining characteristic of a RESTful web application: there is a single URL that is entered, and beyond that all actions are afforded through hypermedia controls. All the information needed to traverse the service is encoded in responses, and no knowledge of the entire interface is needed by the client. Seems relevant to me. I certainly agree it isn't a general purpose browser, but web browsers are only an instance of a hypermedia client, not the definition of one.