Single purpose media types and reusability
The one great thing about twitter is that you quickly find out what you failed to explain clearly :-) My efforts in advocating for single purpose media types failed to clarify that by single purpose, I am not suggesting that these media types should not be re-usable. Let me try and explain.
Single purpose media types and caching
My recent post asking people to refrain from creating more generic hypermedia types sparked some good conversation on twitter between @@mamund, @@cometaj2, @@mogsie, @@inadarei and others. Whilst thinking some more on the potential benefits of single purpose media types versus generic hypermedia types, realized there is a correlation between single purpose media types and representation lifetimes. I thought it might be worth adding to the conversation, but there is no way I could fit it in 140 chars, so I’m posting it here.
Please, no more generic hypermedia types
This opinion has been stewing for a couple of years now, but following an excellent conversation I had with Ted Young the other evening at the API Craft San Francisco event, I think it is time to have more discussion around this subject.