Facebook Relay: An Evil And/Or Incompetent Attack on REST
I deal with REST zealots like this everyday :( just the fact that people spend so much time debating what is and what isn't REST should be a red flag that maybe it isn't the answer to everything.All the simple REST examples make it look like it is the perfect solution for CRUD tasks. But in reality API endpoints are not a straight pass through to the database. An endpoint may do any combination of CRUD tasks, it can't be type casted as a single one with a HTTP verb.Overloading HTTP error codes is another interesting problem.  If the server returns 404 for a resource, what actually happened? Did the web server or my application return the 404.   Conflating HTTP and application error codes leads to confusion.HATEOAS is just superfluous. I've met zealots who will defend it to the death. I just haven't found a practical use for it.Surface area and complexity are a big deal. REST encourages creating a CRUD interface for every single resource.  I've met people who have created literally 100 endpoints upfront for a small application - how is that maintainable?I like that Facebook is standing up to the zealots. I get attacked at work when I try to create simple API endpoints and they aren't 100% REST (if anyone could agree what that even is.)