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 hav...