Surely this is the only sane way to design a REST API? Of course taken to extremes, things can get silly. As I see it, the point of encapsulation is that you d

Surely this is the only sane way to design a REST API? Of course taken to extremes, things can get silly. As I see it, the point of encapsulation is that you don't know what your system might be asked to do next. Keeping things reasonably generic allows you to respond without a major redesign being required.