REST, Hypermedia, and JSON

Enjoying Sam Ruby's latest post titled Connecting, I was reminded that designing a RESTful system means much more than just adhering to a uniform interface (often the first attribute of a ROA that is promoted).

When designing a Resource Oriented Architecture, you mustn't forget about hypermedia and how your resources link to one another, and how those links are expressed through your representations.

Which brings me to JSON. A nifty little format, indeed. And one that, if you are building a modern web service, you should be investigating and implementing. However, if you are indeed building a hypermedia system with JSON, how do you express your links?

I know how to do this in XHTML and RDF, but not sure how to express or render a URI and have it mean "link".

I've love to be able to do something like this:


{
  "name": "Cool Beans",
  "account": "http://example.org/accounts/23242342"
}


However, any JSON client will have a tough time determining what the meaning of the account value is. Sure, it's a string. But how should it be treated? And how do I express that to my JSON clients? I'm not about to give them a regular expression and say "if it matches, it's a URI, and follow it!"

Thoughts? How to express hypermedia in JSON?

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