CRUD Is Not REST - Hypermedia For Y'All!

REST is an architectural style for distributed systems. However, many implementations forget about the distributed part of REST and simply map CRUD operations to HTTP verbs in a monolithic application. We're gonna go further and learn why hypermedia is the crucial part of REST architectures and how machines can browse resources just like humans using self-describing representations.

Monolithic applications are boring, so let's separate things and create a REST system as it is intended to be. Let's build a simple system using the Roar gem, Rails and Sinatra and discuss the benefits and drawbacks we get from distributed hypermedia systems.