Suggestion to avoid distinction between retrieving a rel via _embedded or _links

[eterps]

Consider this example where a GET request to https://example.org/blog-post at one point in time responded with (situation A):

{
  "_links": {
    "self": { "href": "https://example.org/blog-post" },
    "author": { "href": "https://example.org/people/alan-watts" }
  },
  "_embedded": {
    "author": {
      "_links": {
        "self": { "href": "https://example.org/people/alan-watts" }
      },
      "name": "Alan Watts",
      "born": "January 6, 1915",
      "died": "November 16, 1973"
    }
  }
}

And some while later (or earlier) with (situation B):

{
  "_links": {
    "self": { "href": "https://example.org/blog-post" },
    "author": { "href": "https://example.org/people/alan-watts" }
  }
}

If you consider the Hypertext cache pattern, you could see the embedding as an optional optimization, and your client code shouldn't have to check whether a "rel" is embedded or not for every possible resource.

So for example Resource("https://example.org/blog-post").author.name is the same for both situation A and B (but in situation B it would result in an extra request being done).

See also https://github.com/gamache/hyperresource as a (Ruby) example of one way this distinction can be avoided in client code.

[pbcomm]

It's a nice feature and it does follow hypermedia guidelines, however it can be very costly to do that on the browser side. Large datasets that require 50+ fetches will crash any browser. In any case it is very possible to build that in.

[eterps]

I will think about possible solutions to prevent the request snowball effect. Thank you for your consideration.

[pbcomm]

You should also take into the account that these extra calls would have to be made synchronously (even if not many), stopping other processes. Rendering and any other functionality will be delayed. One win for doing this from what I saw, is being alerted immediately that the services are being slammed by requests and something is wrong.

[pezra]

The #related method added in #35 allows consumers to navigate links regardless of whether the link is in the _embedded or _links section. That would make @eterps' example look like

blog_post_resource.related("author").props["name"]

Is that close enough to close this issue?

[mmolhoek]

for example traverson has the follow function, which does just that as far as i know. would be a great addition to hyperagent i think, but @pezra, i think you are right. it sounds like thats the one we need :)