3 ms·
You lept to a conclusion here: > I think the original idea behind discoverability was that you could have a “RESTful client” that could in theory work with any
by bct 14y ago
You lept to a conclusion here:
> I think the original idea behind discoverability was that you could have a “RESTful client” that could in theory work with any REST service that implemented discoverability.
Your analysis of that conclusion makes sense (a generic API browser is not very useful), but why did you think that's "the original idea behind discoverability"?
The BitNative article you link to gives the reason that is usually cited for using hypermedia:
> This allows the API to be highly evolvable because it avoids creating a coupling between the client and the server.
Even more important IMO is that it makes it easier for the many different parties to serve the same API.
- RTigger 14y agoI don't understand the coupling aspect. You're moving from one dependency (URIs) to another (implementation of discoverability). Until HATEOAS/discoverability/rest links themselves are a standard, you're just binding to the way that API decided to do it. And that in my mind is a much bigger dependency than a URI string.
- steveklabnik 14y agoThe coupling is removed because you both standardize on the message format: the media type. Think RSS: clients and servers are decoupled.