How Did REST Come to Mean the Opposite of REST?
6 hours ago
- #Web Development
- #REST
- #HATEOAS
- The term REST, coined by Roy Fielding, originally described a hypermedia-driven architecture for the web, where APIs must be self-describing with hyperlinks and forms driving state transitions.
- Today, 'REST' is widely misused to refer to JSON-based HTTP APIs, which are actually RPC-style (RESTless) because they lack hypermedia controls and require out-of-band documentation.
- The crucial REST constraint is the uniform interface, specifically HATEOAS (Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State), where clients discover actions dynamically from hypermedia responses like HTML.
- JSON APIs typically stop at Level 2 of the Richardson Maturity Model (using resources and HTTP verbs), missing Level 3 (hypermedia controls), thus failing to be truly RESTful.
- Historical factors like the shift from XML to JSON, the rise of SPAs, and the adoption of GraphQL have cemented the inversion of REST's meaning, despite REST's original flexibility and advantages.