Web/IOT: Designing a True REST State Machine | Nordic APIs |

Designing a True REST State Machine | Nordic APIs |: "There are many misconceptions surrounding what exactly Representational State Transfer (REST) is. The prime of which is the concept of hypermedia, or defined in full context, Hypermedia as the engine of application state (HATEOAS).

Jargon aside, hypermedia is actually a valuable idea that many self-touted “RESTful” web APIs do not adhere to. Hypermedia places heightened operational significance on resources, located at URIs. With a hypermedia API, when a request is sent to a URI, the response lists information on resource state and acceptable future operations, in essence creating a state machine that can be manipulated.

Hypermedia is truly valuable as it can create more powerful APIs that alleviate the need for API versioning. But this is only one of many facets that makes true REST design awesome.

Today, we’re dedicating time to define what exactly REST is and isn’t.



Led by RESTafarian Asbjørn Ulsberg, we’ll uncover the history of information design that has led to REST, and debunk some common misinterpretations of REST design.

We’ll also construct a mock state machine and example HTTP behaviors, demonstrating how hypermedia could be used within a REST API to trigger states on an IoT kitchen device. Actually following the REST constraints by building a HATEOAS-compliant API could be very beneficial to advancing the web, so let’s give it the focus it deserves."

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