Question

I was referring to the O’Reilly book on REST api design, that clearly lays down the message format specifically around the areas of how links should be used to represent interrelated resources and stuff. But all the examples are for reading a resource (GET) and how the server structures the message. But what about a Create (POST) ? Should the message structure for create of a similarily inter-connected object be similar i.e through links ??
By the way of an example, let us consider we want to create a Person object with a Parent field . Should the json message format sent to server thru POST (Post msg body) be like :-

{
  name:'test',
  age:12,
  links:[
   {
      rel:'parent',
      href:'/people/john'
    }     
]
}

Answer 1

Yes, that is one way of doing it. GET information might be usefully made human-readable, but POST/PUT information targets the machine.

Adding information to reduce the server’s need to process information (e.g. by limiting itself to verifying information makes sense rather than recovering it all from scratch) also makes a lot of sense, performance-wise. As long as you do verify: keep in mind that user data must be treated as suspect on general principles. You don’t want the first ExtJS-savvy guy being able to forge requests to your services.

You might also format data in XML or CSV, depending on what’s best for the specific application. And keeping in mind that you might want to refactor or reuse the code, so adhering to a single standard also makes sense. All things considered, JSON is probably the best option.