Relationship between HATEOAS and handover ?

[blankdots]

Because there seems to be no reply to: #230 (comment) I will create a new issue and we can discuss it here.

This is a question for @sdelatorrep and @mbaudis, how does handover relate to HATEOAS and HAL it seems there is a connection or at least I think handover could benefit and borrow some of the concepts from those RESTful style and model.
I did read through #114 and PR #230 and it seems that this handover provides links to additional resources of a certain type (or ontology - here I think there could have been other w3c specifications used for inspiration but i am limiting the scope of this issue) or did I misunderstand the purpose of the handover mechanism ?

[sdelatorrep]

@jrambla?

[mbaudis]

@blankdots That depends if/when we define handover protocol types or examples. So far, handover is a vehicle to allow the delivery of data beyond and outside of the Beacon specifications, but initiated by and derived from a Beacon query. Basically a URL and something about what this willl lead to.
IMO the next step for the Beacon protocol would be to use the handover object for extended responses, with then well defined form; it would be e.g. very nice to report the matched variants from range/wildcard queries using handover, instead of loading them directly into the response (we demonstrate this in Beacon+).
So, for now the formulation or format of REST queries as handover URLs is not part of the specification, but it may become so, either through "nice" examples/recommendations, or through specific use cases & gradual protocol extension.

[blankdots]

@mbaudis hmm, well ok. I was judging on the structure of JSON and the examples, and there seems to be a strong resemblance.
Also maybe a resemblance to JSON-LD (purely based on the structure, maybe also on the content as ontologies are utilised by both), but that is a different discussion.

We can keep on discussing, but I've got an answer, thank you!
Issue can be closed.

[mbaudis]

You're right on all counts; but as said, not really part of the spec.; but taking this as an opportunity to maybe create even better examples - @blankdots, @sdelatorrep ... ?

I'm closing this and suggest to open a new issue w/ example of how it could look as "proper REST url", as step to possible protocol inclusion of handover endpoint (examples).