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JavaScript REST APIs with Express Refactoring and Modularizing a REST API Going Further

Posted by Dominik Kaczmarczyk
Dominik Kaczmarczyk
19,509 Points

We've built a nice CRUD API but where's the REST part?

I mean, where's the HATEOAS, which is crucial pillar of REST architecture? Is there any module in Express, like Spring's Spring Hateoas which helps us build proper REST API with navigation links?

I really liked this course, I find Treasure way of teaching really good and easily "understandable", also informative. I know that HATEOAS would be probably overkill for this course's micro API, but I think it's nice to mention about one of fundamental concepts of REST.
It's not an easy thing to implement, I spilled my guts when I encountered it for the first time in Spring and had to understand all of the Resource stuff etc (maybe that's why im so triggered about lackness of HATEOAS in this course)- also I'm not professional developer, still learning and making portfolio for the job, but after trying to implement it in Spring Boot first (university project), and reading a lot of stuff on the web about REST and seeing all of the hate that CRUD API's pretending to be REST API's (like in this course) get, I'm a bit confused, that HATEOAS wasn't even mentioned here.

Of course I might be wrong because as I said, im still learning, but if I am, I would be grateful for enlightening me :)

3 Answers

Kevin Gates
Kevin Gates
15,053 Points
Kevin Gates
Kevin Gates
15,053 Points

This blog post goes in depth on answering your question: https://medium.com/@andreasreiser94/why-hateoas-is-useless-and-what-that-means-for-rest-a65194471bc8

Please note that the post is an opinionated piece, but at least should give you some direction.

Dominik Kaczmarczyk
Dominik Kaczmarczyk
19,509 Points
Dominik Kaczmarczyk
Dominik Kaczmarczyk
19,509 Points

Thank you for an answer- however I'm still not sure if it's like "industry standard" to omit HATEOAS part in REST- on one hand there's this article, on other hand internet is full of programmers saying hateoas is a must and has many advantages. Right now I'm working on project with a lot of many to one relationships between entities and hateoas seems like good idea and gives user (for example front end developer) better understanding and experience traversing through the api. But that could be done with good instruction manual too I guess .