Re: How much REST should your Web API get?

On May 4, 2013, at 9:35 AM, Jørn Wildt <[email protected]> wrote:
> Allow me to disagree with you here. Why do you consider this as being stateful? I don't see how this has anything to do with it. 

Unless everything in your API can be done with at most two HTTP requests (I had not considered that potential) then it would seem your 3rd HTTP request would be assuming the state of your 1st request and thus your API not RESTful. If not, then how not stateful?

> But isn't that exactly what I am proposing? We have one single initial URL, the client GETs the service document representation there and selects among the hyper media elements (the links) that are present in the received representation.

Can everything in your API be done with one additional HTTP request after the home document? If yes, then sorry, I was assuming wrong.  If no, does it not fail this test?

The representation tells the client how to compose all transitions to the next application state. 

> Anyways - RESTful or not - it works and it solves an important problem for us: handling multiple clients and multiple servers that do not evolve in lock step (and it does so by using hyper media among other things).

As acknowledged. 

But if the guy who is building a web API using URL construction gets admonished for calling his api RESTful then is it not appropriate for all other deviations from REST be pointed out if people present their non-conforming APIs as RESTful? This is rest-discuss (and yes I know I am being a pedant at this time.)

-Mike