Take your REST API to the next level with HATEOAS

A pragmatic approach to understanding HATEOAS

HATEOAS, or "Hypermedia As The Engine Of Application State", is a lot about the discoverability in a RESTful API. And it is also the part that most REST APIs misses out on. This is sad because there are a lot of benefits to reap if you take your API to the next level. Especially for the developers using your API.

Some of the benefits of using HATEOAS include simpler clients, simplified authorization control on the client side, and making your API self-documenting. If you are all new to the concept then Martin Fowler's article on the RESTful maturity model is a good start. To summarize it, the model defines four levels of maturity of the RESTfulness of an API:

1. One URI, one HTTP method
2. Multiple resources instead of a single endpoint
3. Use of HTTP verbs
4. Discoverability by using hypermedia

This model can help us understand the ideas behind REST and to fully experience the "glory of REST" the API must pass all four levels. The last level is what HATEOAS is all about and I will spend the rest of this post to discuss a somewhat pragmatic approach to how you can bring HATEOAS to your REST API.* Before we move on it is also worth mentioning another good article about the topic written by Rickard Öberg that you also might want to check out.