All in the name of Pragmatism
hadihariri.com
hadihariri.com
REST is an unfortunate name for a great movement - unfortunate because the original "REST" paper was the same kind of overengineered crap that REST-the-movement was a rebellion against. So now the highly paid consultants are peddling their overengineered crap and calling it "REST" and on a literal level they're right. But the solution isn't to argue about what is and isn't REST - it's to consider the actual behaviours (HTTP verbs, content types, HATEOAS) on their own merits.
I believe in using HTTP verbs to mean the things they say, but I think HATEOAS is actively harmful. Am I doing REST? Who cares!
But this post isn't so much about REST (albeit sparked, once again from it), but about how people use the term pragmatism to get away from truly understanding something.
It seems to me using POST to request information is better than using GET - instead of putting a url in the GET request, put it in the body of the POST (plus anything else you want).
I thing a decent JSON-based approach might be easier than bare http, which lacks things that might be needed.