Comments on: On Linking – Part 1

By: SitePen Blog » Effective use of JsonRestStore: Referencing, Lazy Loading, and more

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:27:40 +0000

[...] of the core concepts of a REST architecture is hyperlinking, and this is available in the JsonRestStore through it’s referencing support. This concept [...]

By: Analytics for Web APIs at subbu.org

Analytics for Web APIs at subbu.org — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:40:48 +0000

[...] Runtime linking in RESTful apps can reduce client-server coupling as the server can tweak the workflow at runtime without completely breaking client apps. Here is one more reason to switch from static pre-published URIs to runtime linking. [...]

By: Directory Structure-like URIs at subbu.org

Directory Structure-like URIs at subbu.org — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:54:42 +0000

[...] URI is such that it is self-describing, the problem is solved. Right? Sorry Alex. No. The answer is linking. This is unfortunate, coming from IBM Developer [...]

By: subbu

subbu — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:03:05 +0000

That would be nice. It would also be interesting to see the programming needs of client applications. HttpURLConnection is not very useful for day to day client app development. JAX-RS has focused so far on the server side, and probably, the heads be at Sun would argue that their sole focus is server side framework, but someone in the JSE/JEE umbrella needs to tackle that problem. It would be great if there is an API on the client that supports conneg, link traversal based on relations, essentially mirroring some of the concepts from the server side.

By: subbu

subbu — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:19:52 +0000

Actually, transitions may be happening on both sides. From the client’s POV, the state of the conversation is changing, while the state of the resources may be changing on the server side as a result of the conversations.

By: subbu

subbu — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:33:15 +0000

Ah. Thanks for pointing it out. My eyes were a bit slow in catching that.

By: Bill Burke

Bill Burke — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:33:46 +0000

BTW, I was thinking of extending JAXB with annotations so that you could easily embed links within it. Combined with relative URI knowledge that’s available within the JAX-RS implementation runtime, this could easily be done in a portable manner. Is there anything else you could think of?

By: Bill Burke

Bill Burke — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:32:37 +0000

No, JAX-RS doesn’t help much with linking/HATEOAS. I’m not sure what it can do here as is not linking/HATEOAS more embedded within the data format and thus mainly an application construct? It would be cool to get some ideas on what tools JAX-RS and JAX-RS implementations could provide to make applications leveraging HATEOAS easier to write.

By: Payload Formats at subbu.org

Payload Formats at subbu.org — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:01:59 +0000

[...] is a plausible conclusion when linking is ignored. I find that Atom's linking, and the abstraction of resource collections as feeds [...]

By: vano

vano — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:23:09 +0000

And now about “transition” arrows. Probably those can be interpreted in different ways. But I think what is important to show on this diagram is that application state transitions happen on the client side. Server is stateless and doesn’t store client’s state. For each request (independently from previous ones) it provides representations with links which client follows and thus moves from state to state. So, I would put those arrows on the left side of the interaction.