RESTful Java Web Services - Third Edition

Programmatically building entity body links using JAX-RS APIs

Before getting into the declarative offerings from the Jersey framework to build HATEOAS APIs, let's see what is there in the JAX-RS API specification for solving this use case. JAX-RS 2.1 has the basic API support for representing hypermedia links with resources.

Let's take an example to understand the APIs provided by JAX-RS for building resource links. Consider the following REST resource class method, which returns a list of department resources:

//Rest of the code is omitted for brevity @GET @Path("departments") @Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON) public List<Department> findAllDeprtments(){ //Finds all departments from database List<Department> departments = findAllDepartmentEntities(); ...