RESTful Web API Patterns and Practices Cookbook

Appendix C. Related Standards

Throughout the book I referred to standards documents. Most of them are public standards, but some are proprietary or private standards efforts. Here is a comprehensive list of standards I mentioned in these pages.

Viable Registered Media Types for RESTful Web APIs

This section contains a list (as of the release of this book) of media types that should be considered when you create your own RWAs. Most of them are already registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Some are still going through the process of registration, and some new ones have been created.

Warning

By the time you read this book, some new media types may have been added, and some listed here may have fallen out of favor. It’s a good idea to keep a look out for changes in the media type registry over time.

I’ve only listed formats I’ve had some experience with in the past. There are likely formats you know well that do not appear here or ones that appear here, you haven’t seen before. Just focus on the ones that work best for you, and feel free to modify this list to fit your own experience and needs. See Recipe 3.2 for details on structured and unstructured types.

Structured Media Types

• HTML

• Collection+JSON

• UBER

• HAL

• SIREN

• HAL-FORMS

• Atom

Unstructured Media Types

• XML

• JSON

• CSV

• JSON-LD

Unregistered Media Types

• YAML

• JSON API

All hypermedia formats are not equal. For example, the Hypertext Application Language (HAL) format ...