How useful/important is REST HATEOAS ( maturity level 3)?

Question

I\'m getting involved in a project where some senior team members believe that a REST API has to be HATEOAS compliant and implement all Richardson\'s maturity levels (http:/

Answer 1

Yes, I have had some experience with hypermedia in APIs. Here are some of the benefits:

1. Explorable API: It may sound trivial but do not underestimate the power of an explorable API. The ability to browse around the data makes it a lot easier for the client developers to build a mental model of the API and its data structures.

2. Inline documentation: The use of URLs as link relations can point client developers to documentation.

3. Simple client logic: A client that simply follows URLs instead of constructing them itself, should be easier to implement and maintain.

4. The server takes ownership of URL structures: The use of hypermedia removes the client's hard coded knowledge of the URL structures used by the server.

5. Off loading content to other services: Hypermedia is necessary when off-loading content to other servers (a CDN for instance).

6. Versioning with links: Hypermedia helps versioning of APIs.

7. Multiple implementations of the same service/API: Hypermedia is a necessity when multiple implementations of the same service/API exists. A service could for instance be a blog API with resources for adding posts and comments. If the service is specified in terms of link relations instead of hard coded URLs then the same service may be instantiated multiple times at different URLs, hosted by different companies but still accessible through the same well defined set of links by one single client.

You can find an in-depth explanation of these bullet points here: http://soabits.blogspot.no/2013/12/selling-benefits-of-hypermedia.html

(there is a similar question here: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/149124/what-is-the-benefit-of-hypermedia-hateoas where I have given the same explanation)