I agree, I too have seen lots of discussions of how to format links in JSON. As you noted, JSON is not a hypermedia format per se, but if you use the Link HTTP header you can add hypermedia to non-hypermedia mediatypes. Here is a quick example:
HTTP Response:
HTTP/1.1 200 Ok
...
Link: <http://example.com/some-resource>; rel="edit";
title="Edit some resource"
Content-type: application/json
{"prop":"val"}
You should be able to see that the link header contains a target url, a relation and optional title. The Link header maps almost exactly to the HTML Link element.
I agree, I havent seen a "true" RESTful service either, except for very simple examples. As others have noted, REST is quite a difficult architectural style to summarise in a few short pithy statements, which leads a lot to the confusion on implementation. I also think that the fact that the architectural style is defined by constraints, which traditionally flies in the face of all previous architectural styles I have seen, which emphasise features and what you CAN do. REST is about what you DONT do. Its these restrictions that combine to make something very powerful, flexible and scalable. Think chess: its a stupid game with a board limited in size, the pieces all move in complicated but specific ways. It cant possibly be an interesting and deep game with all these constraints!
If you are interested in discussions on the subject, I recommend joining the rest-discuss mailing list on Yahoo Groups. Sure the conversation veers into hand-wavy, ivory tower territory, which can be forgiven seeing as the discussion group is for exactly this, but you get some very comprehensive and detailed explanations. Definitely search the archives because a lot of stuff has been answered in great detail before. Roy Fielding even pops on sometimes to correct a few points, and you dont get much more authoritative on the subject than that :)
HTTP Response:
You should be able to see that the link header contains a target url, a relation and optional title. The Link header maps almost exactly to the HTML Link element.I agree, I havent seen a "true" RESTful service either, except for very simple examples. As others have noted, REST is quite a difficult architectural style to summarise in a few short pithy statements, which leads a lot to the confusion on implementation. I also think that the fact that the architectural style is defined by constraints, which traditionally flies in the face of all previous architectural styles I have seen, which emphasise features and what you CAN do. REST is about what you DONT do. Its these restrictions that combine to make something very powerful, flexible and scalable. Think chess: its a stupid game with a board limited in size, the pieces all move in complicated but specific ways. It cant possibly be an interesting and deep game with all these constraints!
If you are interested in discussions on the subject, I recommend joining the rest-discuss mailing list on Yahoo Groups. Sure the conversation veers into hand-wavy, ivory tower territory, which can be forgiven seeing as the discussion group is for exactly this, but you get some very comprehensive and detailed explanations. Definitely search the archives because a lot of stuff has been answered in great detail before. Roy Fielding even pops on sometimes to correct a few points, and you dont get much more authoritative on the subject than that :)