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In our What is REST? article we introduced an important aspect of the Uniform Interface constraint known as HATEOAS. The concept intent of HATEOAS borrows the concept of HTML hyperlinks in HTML as a means to provide self-documented options for users. The difference is that HTML defines this as a standard which makes it possible for clients to interpret the hyperlinks automatically. Plain old JSON does not include any definition for hypermedia. This means any hypermedia included in a JSON object has no way of being self-interpreting. Clients cannot know the difference between a URI that is part of the data model (e.g., a property called companyWebSite) versus a URI that clients can use to navigate to another resource.

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