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The point is correct. Page 39 or 40 of the original thesis, if you get the PDF version, says that the goal of the thesis is to provide a mechanism to build hype

The point is correct. Page 39 or 40 of the original thesis, if you get the PDF version, says that the goal of the thesis is to provide a mechanism to build hypermedia systems. This usage is key. The system that you make using REST needs to provide all of the "linking" ability within the response. It also assumes (Roy never defined what hypermedia is) that the content type is described somewhere, possibly in some standard like HTML spec. The reason that I bring this up, and have harped on this before, is that when most people design REST they are using HTTP + JSON. The problem is that JSON is not hypermedia. Hopefully it will not become hypermedia. As a result, the systems that are HTTP + JSON are not REST. They are RESTish, but not REST. I think that the terms really have value. That is the purpose of language. If we go about calling things that use POST or Get or PUT + JSON hypermedia, we can start to misapply the thoughts of the thesis. If we don't stick to the terms, we can not hope to properly understand the thesis' context and its fundamental goal of synthesizing lessons learned by Roy in how to design a better Internet infrastructure.

icebraining 15y ago
JSON is not hypermedia, but specific formats encoded as JSON can be. To clarify, "application/json" is not REST, but "application/foaf+json" can very well be.
RyanMcGreal 15y ago
See, this is the problem with REST: just when you think you've finally grokked it and are building RESTfully, along comes yet another hurdle hidden behind the others. You're not really RESTful unless you also do X, where X is a seemingly infinite regress of progressively more pure necessary criteria that curve toward an asymptote. Seriously, why is it so hard to develop using a method that is supposed to make building web services easier? Please note that I'm not trolling: I have spent the past year and a half trying really hard to build RESTful web services, I see and have experienced the benefits of this approach, and I think I've been getting progressively better at it.
- kls 15y ago
  You know what it reminds me allot of? MVC. MVC used to have a concrete definition in SmallTalk, Struts 1.0 adopted it fairly pure as well, but from there almost everything became MVC and MVC started to become a fairly generic term for separation of concerns. REST seems to me to be falling into the same trap where originally it was the HTTP actions, then nouns and verbs, now it seems to be expanding in scope again. In defense of the grandparent post though, REST never specified a data or for that mater media format. It could be JSON or XML or even a binary format like a bitmap but a lot of people that talk about RESTfull services talk about JSON which is not a requirement of the original REST concept. REST was more about how a resource was accessed, not what that resource is.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    originally it was the HTTP actions Not really. The web is a RESTful system, but there's nothing specific to HTTP in REST. It's just an architectural style, it doesn't specify nothing in concrete.
    - kls 15y ago
      I understand that, but for all intents and purposes people are doing REST over HTTP, when people talk about REST and it's use on the web HTTP is implied, my use of originally was definitely not the correct word choice better verbiage would be "when it started to be used by web application developers REST was". That being said They (REST and HTTP) where envisioned together, while REST does not require HTTP, for the most part that is where it is being utilized, HTTP actions being used as the semantics to transfer the representative state.
- icebraining 15y ago
  There are only six constraints to be considered RESTful, and those are reasonably well defined. Anything else is either not really a part of REST (such as having to use all HTTP methods, or having clean URLs) or derived from them. In this case, sending some representation as just JSON (application/json) clearly breaks the Uniform Interface constraint, particularly the HATEOAS principle: a client is supposed to only know the base URL and the mimetypes. If he gets 'application/json' as a reply, how is he supposed to know what to do with it? It may be a user profile, or a blog post, or a description of an UI, etc, there's no way to tell.
malandrew 15y ago
Why do you say "Hopefully it will not become hypermedia" with respect to JSON? What's wrong with this happening? What are your thoughts on the Collection+JSON hypermedia type presented in Amundsen's book? http://www.amundsen.com/media-types/collection/ http://www.amundsen.com/media-types/collection/

icebraining 15y ago

JSON is not hypermedia, but specific formats encoded as JSON can be. To clarify, "application/json" is not REST, but "application/foaf+json" can very well be.

RyanMcGreal 15y ago

See, this is the problem with REST: just when you think you've finally grokked it and are building RESTfully, along comes yet another hurdle hidden behind the others. You're not really RESTful unless you also do X, where X is a seemingly infinite regress of progressively more pure necessary criteria that curve toward an asymptote. Seriously, why is it so hard to develop using a method that is supposed to make building web services easier? Please note that I'm not trolling: I have spent the past year and a half trying really hard to build RESTful web services, I see and have experienced the benefits of this approach, and I think I've been getting progressively better at it.

kls 15y ago
You know what it reminds me allot of? MVC. MVC used to have a concrete definition in SmallTalk, Struts 1.0 adopted it fairly pure as well, but from there almost everything became MVC and MVC started to become a fairly generic term for separation of concerns. REST seems to me to be falling into the same trap where originally it was the HTTP actions, then nouns and verbs, now it seems to be expanding in scope again. In defense of the grandparent post though, REST never specified a data or for that mater media format. It could be JSON or XML or even a binary format like a bitmap but a lot of people that talk about RESTfull services talk about JSON which is not a requirement of the original REST concept. REST was more about how a resource was accessed, not what that resource is.
- icebraining 15y ago
  originally it was the HTTP actions Not really. The web is a RESTful system, but there's nothing specific to HTTP in REST. It's just an architectural style, it doesn't specify nothing in concrete.
  - kls 15y ago
    I understand that, but for all intents and purposes people are doing REST over HTTP, when people talk about REST and it's use on the web HTTP is implied, my use of originally was definitely not the correct word choice better verbiage would be "when it started to be used by web application developers REST was". That being said They (REST and HTTP) where envisioned together, while REST does not require HTTP, for the most part that is where it is being utilized, HTTP actions being used as the semantics to transfer the representative state.
icebraining 15y ago
There are only six constraints to be considered RESTful, and those are reasonably well defined. Anything else is either not really a part of REST (such as having to use all HTTP methods, or having clean URLs) or derived from them. In this case, sending some representation as just JSON (application/json) clearly breaks the Uniform Interface constraint, particularly the HATEOAS principle: a client is supposed to only know the base URL and the mimetypes. If he gets 'application/json' as a reply, how is he supposed to know what to do with it? It may be a user profile, or a blog post, or a description of an UI, etc, there's no way to tell.

malandrew 15y ago

Why do you say "Hopefully it will not become hypermedia" with respect to JSON? What's wrong with this happening? What are your thoughts on the Collection+JSON hypermedia type presented in Amundsen's book? http://www.amundsen.com/media-types/collection/ http://www.amundsen.com/media-types/collection/