A real RESTful API leverages hypermedia so that clients rely only on dynamic hypermedia provided by server to navigate through the application (the concept known as HATEOAS)
This concept is easily applicable to web applications but how do you apply it to Single Page Application as SPAs normally manage their state internally (without relying on the server as far as navigation is concerned) ?
My feeling is that SPAs cannot fully leverage RESTful APIs or did I miss something ?
Thanks
Riana
A SPA's particularity is it provides a more fluid user experience with the UI constructed on the client instead of being constructed on the server and just rendered on the client.
A SPA doesn't necessarily need to hold its own state, the server can still drive the interactions with HATEOAS. For the SPA to be hypermedia driven or otherwise maintain its own state and access predefined resources, depends entirely on the application.
Combinations can also work, like for example the SPA maintaining its own state for some parts with other being driven by the server. In this sense, consider for example paginated results. The SPA might go to a particular URL (having prior knowledge of that resource) to get a list of results, with those results being paginated. The server embeds links inside the results so that the client can navigate them to the next and previous pages (you interact with the application through hypermedia provided by the server).
My feeling is that SPAs cannot fully leverage RESTful APIs or did I miss something ?
As I said above, it depends on your application. If it makes sense for the application to be hypermedia driven, then it can be built like that. On the other hand, if it makes more sense to have the SPA "drive itself" then forcing HATEOS on it might not be a good idea.