API Strategy & Practice Conference 2017

Description: 
REST APIs tend to be created with single resources, without references to other related resources. The gold standard for REST includes hypermedia for related resources, but how can a server best provide the related resources to clients? This talk explores a few different approaches to handling related data, with thought given to request size, cacheability and scaling. 

Abstract: 
In Richardson’s Maturity Model, the Glory of REST lives in hypermedia. However, many REST APIs don’t incorporate hypermedia, and even when it’s available it tends to result in a very chatty transaction. Various companies have solved this problem with different approaches, and some new technologies have given API providers even more choice in helping their clients provide the best user experience.The richness of our data has made it important to tackle this topic so API clients can provide a rich user experience. 

The approaches I will discuss include: 
* Hypermedia guided calls - Clients choose which additional resources to request based on hypermedia information 
* Hypermedia-driven expansion - Netflix’s original API allowed clients to expand related resources inline to retrieve a richer dataset 
* Specialized query language - LinkedIn’s complex graph was served by a specialized query language 
* GraphQL - Framework for graph queries to shape custom requests 
* Hypermedia-driven H/2 Server Push - Offering related information for clients to process or reject