Comments on: The power of hypermedia remains non-obvious http://barelyenough.org/blog/2007/10/the-power-of-hypermedia-remains-non-obvious/ … and there is much to be learned Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:46:19 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Peter Williams http://barelyenough.org/blog/2007/10/the-power-of-hypermedia-remains-non-obvious/comment-page-1/#comment-33338 Peter Williams Fri, 12 Oct 2007 21:16:18 +0000 http://pezra.barelyenough.org/blog/2007/10/the-power-of-hypermedia-remains-non-obvious/#comment-33338 <p>Patrick,</p> <p>No offense intended with the Mr bit. I don't generally call people I have never meet by their first names (unless of course I am invited to do so).</p> <p>As for the subject at hand, I think that data at URI even for closed systems is less than optimal. It really locks you into what ever the current way of thinking about your system is. You could use a URI template, I suppose, a way around that problem. But to allow for future changes to the system you would really need to include the URI template with every response and seems like a lot for effort to avoid generating the URIs server side.</p> Patrick,

No offense intended with the Mr bit. I don’t generally call people I have never meet by their first names (unless of course I am invited to do so).

As for the subject at hand, I think that data at URI even for closed systems is less than optimal. It really locks you into what ever the current way of thinking about your system is. You could use a URI template, I suppose, a way around that problem. But to allow for future changes to the system you would really need to include the URI template with every response and seems like a lot for effort to avoid generating the URIs server side.

]]> By: Patrick Mueller http://barelyenough.org/blog/2007/10/the-power-of-hypermedia-remains-non-obvious/comment-page-1/#comment-33328 Patrick Mueller Fri, 12 Oct 2007 20:06:05 +0000 http://pezra.barelyenough.org/blog/2007/10/the-power-of-hypermedia-remains-non-obvious/#comment-33328 <p>Peter, first, please don't call me Mr. I'm old, but I'm not ... THAT old! :-)</p> <p>Sorry about the problem submitting comments; there have been some problems with comments at dWorks in the last few days.</p> <p>Note I'm not discounting links; I'm suggesting they don't have to be presented as URLs on the wire. In fact, your Google Maps sample of the server sending a URL template ... just another case of the data story; the client will end up taking the data and deriving the final URL. In that case, from the template. In my example, from some a priori knowledge of the layout of the URLs in the system.</p> <p>The "link as data" scheme clearly only works for a "closed system" in which the layout of the URL space is known in advance by the client, or communicated in some other fashion (URL template). Not appropriate everywhere. Didn't mean to imply it would be.</p> Peter, first, please don’t call me Mr. I’m old, but I’m not … THAT old! :-)

Sorry about the problem submitting comments; there have been some problems with comments at dWorks in the last few days.

Note I’m not discounting links; I’m suggesting they don’t have to be presented as URLs on the wire. In fact, your Google Maps sample of the server sending a URL template … just another case of the data story; the client will end up taking the data and deriving the final URL. In that case, from the template. In my example, from some a priori knowledge of the layout of the URLs in the system.

The “link as data” scheme clearly only works for a “closed system” in which the layout of the URL space is known in advance by the client, or communicated in some other fashion (URL template). Not appropriate everywhere. Didn’t mean to imply it would be.

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