Leveraging linked data to build hypermedia-driven web APIs

Abstract

In this chapter we will illustrate how Linked Data can be used to create loosely coupled, hypermedia-driven Web APIs. Apart from introducing JSON-LD and showing how it can be used as a generic data format for Web APIs, we will demonstrate how a short list of concrete design guidelines and a small vocabulary can be used to create APIs that expose enough information to be usable by a completely generic API browser. Based on a simple prototype, we will show how easily such a, at first sight, disruptive approach can be integrated in current Web frameworks and how it can be used to build interoperable and evolvable APIs in considerably less time. Last but not least, we will give an outlook of how such an approach opens the door to other Semantic Web technologies.