[rest-practices] text/html representation?

[Bryan Kearney]

On 04/27/2010 04:23 PM, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> Hey,
>
> I was trying to think of some simple advice for people designing REST
> APIs - things like "if you're documenting the URI scheme, it's not
> HATEOAS"

This implies a level of maturity on the client which the tooling does 
not help yet. I would put Hateoas as a goal to strive for, not a hard 
requirement now.

>
> Would it be a worthwhile exercise for API designers to add a text/html
> representation of their resources? with forms for action buttons etc.

I would be wary of adding serializers here. Plus... adding 
authentication may require the notion of state (e.g. credentials, certs, 
etc) on the client which the API will not require.

>
> That way you could be confident your really API is hypertext driven. It
> would also be a nice way for API users to browse the API
>
> Just a thought ...


Maybe an XST layer :) Who worked with Cocoon back in the day?

-- bk