What HATEOAS actually means

RESTless about RESTful These days there is much discussion about REST and HATEOAS, and many people feel urged to reinterpret what HATEOAS means or what Roy Fielding's often-cited dissertation allegedly would say in their understanding, and what HATEOAS should be implemented like therefore. While I first felt amused about this "dispute about nothing" (just ask Mr Fielding if you don't understand what his dissertation tells us; no need to guess), the longer I follow those (in part ridiculously wrong) assumptions and myths, the more myself feels urged to stop those and shout: "Guys, before discussing your ideas, first learn what Mr Fielding's idea was!" There is nothing to interprete or construe. His words are clear and unambiguous. Just read them, if necessary twice. It tells us everything we like to know. Really. Flashback In his dissertation Roy Thomas Fielding explained RESTful architecture (actually it seems that it even introduced the word REST), including hypermedia as the engine of application state (HATEOAS): "The next control state of an application resides in the representation of the first requested resource, … The application state is controlled and stored by the user agent … anticipate changes to that state (e.g., link maps and prefetching of representations) … The model application is therefore an engine that moves f...

Date: February, 14 2010
Url: http://www.java.net/blog/mkarg/archive/2010/02/14/what-hateoas-actually-means

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