On Feb 10, 2010, at 11:10 PM, Jan Algermissen wrote:
>
>>
>>> if you write clients that rely on any kind of expectation about
>>> the representations
>>
>> I don't believe this is realistic. If a client states to the server
>> that it Accepts a certain type he either gets the correct
>> representation or an error
>
> Yes. But if you code the client with the assumption that certain
> links will definitely be present in the response the client is not
> doing REST. Clients must react on what they are being sent (react on
> the state they are being put into by the server) and try to persue
> their goal from there.
>
A service will document the supported media types, link types and a
root (bootstrap) URI. This is the hypermedia contract that clients
bind to. And this is what machine-based clients will program to.
Paul.