HATEOAS API对象设计

Question

What is the current best practice on using pragmatic hateoas when a POST object may differ from the GET object of the same resource? For example, would the following be bad API design?

1. For the resource /families a client may POST a new family and include many "members":[] in the same request.

2. /members is also a resource

3. Given a successful POST or GET, the server returns an object that includes a different "family" object to include links:

    { "id": 123, "name": "The Adams Family", "_links": { "members": { "href": "/families/123/members" } } 

Answer 1

I think it would be better to use nested resources in this case eg in HAL+JSON:

{
    "id": 123,
    "name": "The Adams Family",
    "_embedded": {
        "members": {
            "_links": {
                "self": {
                    "href": "/families/123/members"
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

I think your solution is okay as well, but you have to define the members link relation in the documentation, so the clients (and their developers) will know that "members" means family members, and not for example members of any collection (eg hydra defines a member property for collection items and schema.org defines a members property for organization members).