[uf-rest] "Casual Web Services" and Well Designed Urls

[Etan Wexler]

Mark Baker wrote to Microformats REST:

> What does "out of band" mean here?
> 
> If it means "not in the messages being exchanged", then I agree that
> REST has something to say about that viz a viz the hypermedia
> constraint.

I intended “out of band” not only as a label for stuff which is not in
the messages exchanged, but also as a label for stuff which is in the
messages exchanged but does not constitute hypermedia.

Hypermedia includes rules of construction where the rules find 
expression in a resource representation of a standard content type and 
where the content type indicates how to interpret the rules. HTML forms 
count.

> I can't see what it is about Mike's original message (or
> welldesignedurls.org) that breaks that constraint.

I quote Mike Schinkel’s original message 
(<http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2006-October/006341.html>):

“Since the URL structure of a REST-based web services typically becomes 
an important part of the API, HTML web pages will need Well Designed 
Urls in order to operate effectively as REST-based web services.”

Again I admit that I don’t really know what REST-based Web services are. 
I welcome a definition, most of all from Mike Schinkel.

Mike Schinkel’s original message does not, by itself, break the 
constraint of hypermedia as the engine of application state. I admit 
that I read into the message meaning which was not explicit. Let me make 
my understanding explicit to allow corrections:

• I understand “the URL structure of a REST-based web [service] 
typically becomes an important part of the API” as meaning that it is 
within REST when a manager of an origin server chooses, instead of 
hypermedia, natural-language documentation of the manager’s allocation 
policies for URIs.

• I understand “the URL structure of a REST-based web [service] 
typically becomes an important part of the API” as meaning that it is 
within REST when a designer of a user agent chooses, instead of 
programming the user agent to seek and use hypermedia, to program the 
user agent with the designer’s knowledge of allocation policies for URIs 
and with the designer’s presumptions about feasible and desirable 
transitions between application states.

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