adding HTTP method to Spring HATEOAS links

Question

I am wondering if it is possible to add HTTP method to the links created with Spring HATEOAS. I would like the link to look something like:

{
    "href":http://localhost:8080/admin/users",
    "rel": "add",
    "method": "POST"
}

{
    "href":http://localhost:8080/admin/users/john",
    "rel": "remove",
    "method": "DELETE"
}

I couldn't find anything which would allow me to add "method" to the link.

Answer 1

That wouldn't make sense. The href specifies the address of some resource, and the rel tells how it's related to the current resource. The HTTP method indicates what the client wants to do to it, which isn't a part of the relationship between the two.

In your example, the "remove" relation doesn't make sense: HTTP specifies the DELETE verb, and the semantics of

DELETE http://localhost:8080/admin/users/john

are already known. Similarly, POST creates a new resource, so specifying /admin/users is sufficient for a client to list the users (with GET) or add a new user (with POST).

Answer 2

You should use the relation "edit".

In the section (11.1) from the Atom Pub RFC (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5023) which defines that you can send PUT/DELETE/GET requests to this URI of the edit relation.