RESTful web services - Making Java Groovy - page 327

Hypermedia [ 20 ] in JAX-RS works through links, which come in two types:
20 Believe it or not, neither the words hypermedia nor HATEOAS appears at all in the JSR 339 specification. I have
no explanation for this.
• Transitional links in HTTP headers
• Structural links embedded in the response
Figure 9.4 shows both in a single HTTP response.
Figure 9.4. Transitional links appear in the HTTP response headers, while structural links are part of the response
objects. In each case the links can be used to access other resources from this one.
Version 2.0 of the JAX-RS specification supports transitional links using the Link and
LinkBuilder classes, and structural links using a special JAXB serializer.
To illustrate both, I'll continue with the Person example from earlier by adding links to
each instance. Each person has three possible links:
• A self link, containing the URL for that person
• A prev link, pointing to the person with an ID one less than the current person
• A next link, pointing to the person with an ID one greater than the current person
This is a rather contrived case, but it has the advantage of simplicity.