11–20 of 31 posts
Calling an API without hypermedia a “level two REST API” is like calling a lettuce and tomato sandwich a “level two BLT”. You’re missing an intrinsic piece of the puzzle and anybody actually expecting a BLT is going to be disappointed. Why are people so adamant that they absolutely must call non-REST APIs “REST”? Names are free, you don’t have to hijack the name of something else!
> This allows us to invoke GETs safely any number of times in any order and get the same results each time. An important consequence of this is that it allows any participant in the routing of requests to use caching, which is a key element in making the web perform as well as it does. What conditions for a restful api does this come in handy? In most implementations I have had the requests are as quick to figure out…
I would love to see some real world use cases of level 3, both for machine to machine use and for human to machine use.
The World-Wide Web.
I'll say that the religious approach some take with REST is weird to me. Apparently there's some promised utopia behind getting REST perfect but in the end, nobody does it right but everybody makes it work for their case Getting the linkrels back is great, but it is up to your frontend to interpret them and display them back. There is no "magic" there because only humans know what does cancel/change mean, not the com…
Calling an API without hypermedia a “level two REST API” is like calling a lettuce and tomato sandwich a “level two BLT”. You’re missing an intrinsic piece of the puzzle and anybody actually expecting a BLT is going to be disappointed. Why are people so adamant that they absolutely must call non-REST APIs “REST”? Names are free, you don’t have to hijack the name of something else!
> I should stress that the RMM, while a good way to think about what the elements of REST, is not a definition of levels of REST itself. Roy Fielding has made it clear that level 3 RMM is a pre-condition of REST.
Calling an API without hypermedia a “level two REST API” is like calling a lettuce and tomato sandwich a “level two BLT”. You’re missing an intrinsic piece of the puzzle and anybody actually expecting a BLT is going to be disappointed. Why are people so adamant that they absolutely must call non-REST APIs “REST”? Names are free, you don’t have to hijack the name of something else!
Level 2 is good for API’s, level 3 is good for hypermedia browsed by a human.
Calling an API without hypermedia a “level two REST API” is like calling a lettuce and tomato sandwich a “level two BLT”. You’re missing an intrinsic piece of the puzzle and anybody actually expecting a BLT is going to be disappointed. Why are people so adamant that they absolutely must call non-REST APIs “REST”? Names are free, you don’t have to hijack the name of something else!
they say REST, they mean 'transport over HTTP and JSON payload'
So, yeah, REST means whatever people use it for, that is 'HTTP services with JSON payload'. That's the actually valuable part of it anyway, the meaning that was documented after everybody started using it wrong is a synonym for the web, and we already have a name for it.
Calling an API without hypermedia a “level two REST API” is like calling a lettuce and tomato sandwich a “level two BLT”. You’re missing an intrinsic piece of the puzzle and anybody actually expecting a BLT is going to be disappointed. Why are people so adamant that they absolutely must call non-REST APIs “REST”? Names are free, you don’t have to hijack the name of something else!
The article doesn't say to call an API without hypermedia a "level 2 REST API"; in fact it says the exact opposite. > I should stress that the RMM, while a good way to think about what the elements of REST, is not a definition of levels of REST itself. Roy Fielding has made it clear that level 3 RMM is a pre-condition of REST.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
they say REST, they mean 'transport over HTTP and JSON payload'
Nobody ever understood what REST means. The "standard" creator choosing not to document its meaning really didn't help. So, yeah, REST means whatever people use it for, that is 'HTTP services with JSON payload'. That's the actually valuable part of it anyway, the meaning that was documented after everybody started using it wrong is a synonym for the web, and we already have a name for it.
REST isn’t a standard, it’s an architectural style. And I’m not sure how you can say that the author chose not to document its meaning when the name “REST” originated with the author’s PhD dissertation.