Re: [httpapi] JSON serialization for Web Linking

[Evert Pot <[e-mail]>]

Hi Darrel,

On 2020-11-15 5:26 p.m., Darrel Miller wrote:
>
> Hey Evert,
>
> While I agree it would be great if there were a common way of 
> serializing links across media types, I’m concerned we are going to 
> head down a path of bikeshedding.  I remember a lot of debates when 
> HAL chose to use an object to serialize links instead of an array.  
> There were valid arguments for both the array form and the object 
> form.  It is a warning sign for me that these two drafts take the 
> opposite approaches.
>
I 100% agree, it would be better if the two drafts used the same format.

> My other concern is it seems like the intent of the draft is to try 
> and standardize a concept that will then be used by other media types 
> and frameworks. Your draft does declare the application/links+json but 
> that seems like a secondary goal of the spec.  While I understand the 
> desire to create standard building blocks for JSON documents, such a 
> mechanism doesn’t exists within HTTP.  It seems more closely related 
> to efforts like schema.org.
>
>
I think it's definitely fair to say that this draft does not directly 
tie to HTTP, and more to JSON in a more general way. I thought this 
could be a good place to submit it here nonetheless. The group is 
described as "Building Blocks for HTTP APIs", and given that many HTTP 
APIs are ultimately going to be using JSON, and there's a good chance 
they would want to encode a link, it feels like the perfect building block.

My hope is that afterwards, json-links may be extended to get other 
formats to rfc status, such as:

https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-nottingham-json-home-06
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-nottingham-link-hint-02

There's so many efforts in this space that will have a need for this. I 
hope we can look past things like the array/object bike-shedding and get 
behind something that is generally good enough.

If taking out the bits around "application/links+json" and 
document-level links gives this a higher chance of success, I think this 
is worth it.

Evert