RESTful Web Clients: Enabling Reuse Through Hypermedia

Web-based REST and Hypermedia services are becoming more common every day, but very few client libraries take advantage of these powerful API features—mostly because the techniques and patterns needed to create successful hypermedia clients have been ignored. Yet, when done right, hypermedia-based client applications exhibit more stability and flexibility than typical one-off custom client code.

This practical book takes you on a journey from custom bespoke implementations to powerful general-purpose client applications and, along the way, shows how you can harness many of the basic principles that underpin the Web. Throughout the book, you’ll find practical, approachable examples and dialogs, as well as clear guidance on how to understand this increasingly important conversation.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Our HTML Roots and Simple Web APIs
Chapter 2. JSON Clients
Chapter 3. The Representor Pattern
Chapter 4. HAL Clients
Chapter 5. The Challenge of Reusable Client Apps
Chapter 6. Siren Clients
Chapter 7. Versioning and the Web
Chapter 8. Collection+JSON Clients
Chapter 9. Hypermedia and Microservices
Chapter Epilogue: Welcome to Your Future
Appendix A. Project List
Appendix B. Tools and Resources