[jonnytran]

Ember Data and server-side components like active_model_serializers for Rails are working towards the entire shebang.

I agree that mobile development is driving a lot of this. If you've built mobile-first, then you already have an API that services multiple clients. And the web app is just another client, no?

So it makes me wonder, maybe what we need is the equivalent of Ember Data that runs on iOS and Android to bridge the gap between the API and the native framework.

[steveklabnik]

This is the whole reason for formalizing the media type that ember-data expects into JSON API. That way, you can implement whichever side in whichever language and know it all works well together.