Using a RESTful Web Service for Custom Link Links - 'rel'

Question

I work on a RESTful service and focus on Discoverability, Link relations - 'rel' and microformats. I don’t understand the meaning of “rel” in the REST context - am I allowed to use any custom value to provide richer semantics or do I need to use only the default values ​​(which are very constraining)?

I know that microformats really have expanded the values ​​of 'rel', but I don't use any microformats yet.

Any help is appreciated. Thank you

Answer 1

Linking relationships (rel) is one of two ways that you can convey semantics to a client. Another way is media types.

The best specification to read on a web link is here http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988 .

The link relationship registry is here http://www.iana.org/assignments/link-relations/link-relations.xml .

And for an example of how to use link relationships to convey semantics, you can see the media type Hal. This is a general type of media that uses link links to convey all its semantic meaning. http://stateless.co/hal_specification.html