RESTful Java Web Services - Second Edition

Building Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State (HATEOAS) APIs

HATEOAS is a constraint of the REST application architecture that keeps the RESTful style architecture unique from most other network application architectures. This architectural style lets you use hypermedia links in the response contents so that the client can dynamically navigate to the appropriate resource by traversing the hypermedia links. This is conceptually the same as a web user navigating through web pages by clicking the appropriate hyperlinks in order to achieve a final goal. We have briefly covered this topic in Chapter 1, Introducing the REST Architectural Style, under the Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State section. In this section, we will learn how ...