Yes. You used it to enter this comment.
I am using it to enter this reply.
The magical client that can make use of an auto-discoverable API is called a "web browser", which you are using right this moment, as we speak.
Yes. You used it to enter this comment.
I am using it to enter this reply.
The magical client that can make use of an auto-discoverable API is called a "web browser", which you are using right this moment, as we speak.
This is true, but isn’t this quite far away from the normal understanding of API, which is an interface consumed by a program? Isn’t this the P in Application Programming Interface? If it’s a human at the helm, it’s called a User Interface.
I agree that's a common understanding of things, but I don't think that it's 100% accurate. I think that a web browser is a client program, consuming a RESTful application programming interface in the manner that RESTful APIs are designed to be consumed, and presenting the result to a human to choose actions.
I think if you restrict the notion of client to "automated programs that do not have a human driving them" then REST becomes much less useful:
https://htmx.org/essays/hypermedia-clients/
https://intercoolerjs.org/2016/05/08/hatoeas-is-for-humans.h...
AI may change this at some point.
At that level, it would be infinitely clearer to say, "There is no such thing as a RESTful API, since the purpose of REST is to connect a system to a human user. There is only such a thing as a RESTful UI based on an underlying protocol (HTML/HTTP). But the implementation of this protocol (the web browser) is secondary to the actual purpose of the system, which is always a UI."
If you allow the notion of client to include "web browser driven by humans", then what is it about Fielding's dissertation that is considered so important and original in the first place? Sure it's formal and creates some new and precise terminology, but the concept of browsing was already well established when he wrote it.
It formalized the network architecture of distributed hypermedia systems and described interesting characteristics and tradeoffs of that approach. Whether or not it did a GOOD job of that for the layman I will leave to you, only noting the confusion around the topic found, ironically, across the internet.
So, given a hateos api, and stock firefox (or chrome, or safari, or whatever), it will generate client views with crud functionality?
Let alone ux affordances, branding, etc.
Yes. You used such an api to post your reply. And I am using it as well, via the affordances presented by the mobile safari hypermedia client program. Quite an amazing system!
No. I was served HTML. not a json respoise that the browser discovered how to display.
Yes. Exactly.
html is the hateoas response
I also use Google Maps, YouTube, Spotify, and Figma in the same web browser. But surely most of the functionality of those would not be considered HATEOAS.
The web browser is just following direct commands. The auto discovery and logic is implemented by my human brain
Yes.
https://intercoolerjs.org/2016/05/08/hatoeas-is-for-humans.h...
Wait what? So everything is already HATEOAS?
I thought the “problem” was that no one was building proper restful / HATEOAS APIs.
It can’t go both ways.
The web, in traditional HTML-based responses, uses HATEOAS, almost by definition. JSON APIs rarely do, and when they do it's largely pointless.
https://htmx.org/essays/how-did-rest-come-to-mean-the-opposi...
https://intercoolerjs.org/2016/05/08/hatoeas-is-for-humans.h...