[prebrov]

His argument is for API discoverability. Client should be able to learn about available endpoints

[edit: ...and resources. And be able to comprehend resource record conventions]

[deathanatos]

I also don't see the point of API discoverability, at least, not programmatically. Sure, such a thing could be built, but I don't know what could be done w/ the results. Most API's I've ever worked on required domain knowledge in order to operate on (e.g., you had to understand the content — semantically — of the result. I.e., you needed to understand what a `applicaiton/vnd.bigcorp.widget.v2+json` was.)

I just don't see any generic operations w.r.t. discovery that are … useful.

I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't, e.g., use URLs in your resulting resources; e.g., if a query for a widget returns:

  {
    "widget_name": "NextGen Enterprise Widget",
    "suppliers": "http://bigcorp.example.com/widget/123/suppliers"
  }

That's fine. But you're still going to need to know how to parse the result of …/suppliers, or it's just opaque bytes.