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Not in the eyes of its creator https://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven https://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hyp

Not in the eyes of its creator https://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven https://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypert...

LudwigNagasena 4y ago
Is there a single example of API that fits that definition of REST though?
- empthought 4y ago
  HATEOAS is the search term you want to use. “Hypermedia as the engine of application state.” PayPal and GitHub APIs tend to work this way. They return a pile of hyperlinks.
  - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
    If by "tend to work that way" you mean that they satisfy around 20% of the requirements in the post by Roy T. Fielding as opposed to other services that satisfy only 10%...
    - empthought 4y ago
      I don't think you are familiar with the GitHub REST API; none of Fielding's points apply to it.
      - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
        I honestly don’t know how someone can design a truly HATEOAS API without breaking everyone’s expectations and making it a chore for people to deal with it. If stuffing a bunch of links into your JSON response is what truly transforms your RPC into REST (I don’t see what else makes GitHub API so different from other APIs), then I don’t even know what’s the point of that. And surely it is only superficially similar to the non-API REST, ie how simple websites usually work.
- progval 4y ago
  HTTP+HTML+CSS (and Javascript) is the REST API used to communicate between clients (browsers) and servers. It's not a coincidence, it was the point of the thesis defining REST to formalize and improve the Web. See: https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/introduction.htm https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/introduc... In terms of what we think of as an API today, my favorite is SWORD: https://sword.cottagelabs.com https://sword.cottagelabs.com In particular, it does not define any URL scheme, client applications are expected to read links from the XML (for v1 and v2) or JSON (for v3) body.

Not in the eyes of its creator https://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven https://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypert...

LudwigNagasena 4y ago

Is there a single example of API that fits that definition of REST though?

empthought 4y ago
HATEOAS is the search term you want to use. “Hypermedia as the engine of application state.” PayPal and GitHub APIs tend to work this way. They return a pile of hyperlinks.
- LudwigNagasena 4y ago
  If by "tend to work that way" you mean that they satisfy around 20% of the requirements in the post by Roy T. Fielding as opposed to other services that satisfy only 10%...
  - empthought 4y ago
    I don't think you are familiar with the GitHub REST API; none of Fielding's points apply to it.
    - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
      I honestly don’t know how someone can design a truly HATEOAS API without breaking everyone’s expectations and making it a chore for people to deal with it. If stuffing a bunch of links into your JSON response is what truly transforms your RPC into REST (I don’t see what else makes GitHub API so different from other APIs), then I don’t even know what’s the point of that. And surely it is only superficially similar to the non-API REST, ie how simple websites usually work.
progval 4y ago
HTTP+HTML+CSS (and Javascript) is the REST API used to communicate between clients (browsers) and servers. It's not a coincidence, it was the point of the thesis defining REST to formalize and improve the Web. See: https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/introduction.htm https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/introduc... In terms of what we think of as an API today, my favorite is SWORD: https://sword.cottagelabs.com https://sword.cottagelabs.com In particular, it does not define any URL scheme, client applications are expected to read links from the XML (for v1 and v2) or JSON (for v3) body.