hateoas

• Hypermedia As The Engine Of Application State
• Contrast this with interface description languages where clients are given descriptions on how to consume a web service.

example

A GET request results in information and 3 methods being presented in the response:

GET /accounts/12345

Response

{
    accountId=12345,
    balance=100.00,
    links: deposit=../deposit
    withdraw=../withdraw
    transfer= ../transfer
}

Some time later, client calls /accounts again. This time, the account is overdrawn so a different set of methods are presented:

Response 
{
    accountId=12345,
    balance=-25.00,
    links: deposit=../deposit
}