What Is HATEOAS?
Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State, or HATEOAS for short, is a flavor of REST that uses hypermedia to describe what future actions are available to the client. Allowable actions are derived in the API based on the current application state and returned to the client as a collection of links. The client then uses these links to drive further interactions with the API.
Do I Need HATEOAS to Do REST?
In my opinion, no. Now that’s a potentially controversial point of view, as many will argue that that only hypermedia enabled services are truly RESTful. I base my opinion on experience in the real world and the fact that I’ve built numerous REST APIs over the years that didn’t use HATEOAS but served their purpose well. HATEOAS certainly has its place but it shouldn’t be considered mandatory for RESTful APIs.
