So how does the machine, in these examples, request the machine understandable representation of the resource?
If the 'concept' is http://www.example.com/book/123, from this explanation, then there should be a way to get different representations of that via different verbs, right?
I guess this is where it always falls down for me, because there isn't a consistent way that all machine readable representations are flagged. Rather, we usually seem to define different URLs via extensions, for example, to define the different representations, which from this explanation seem like they should be reserved for different 'nouns' or 'concepts'.
Am I misunderstanding, or is that just the state of where we are at? And are there any plans to define those new 'verbs' at some point?
At the moment, generally you use GET and ask for a different Content-Type with an Accept header, or you say something like <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="foo.xml" />. In some cases you're expected to guess the alternate URL instead, maybe based on a document somewhere else, which is non-RESTian. However, it's pretty rare for someone to do what you suggest, which is to use new HTTP verbs in order to get different representations.
Comments
So how does the machine, in these examples, request the machine understandable representation of the resource?
If the 'concept' is http://www.example.com/book/123, from this explanation, then there should be a way to get different representations of that via different verbs, right?
I guess this is where it always falls down for me, because there isn't a consistent way that all machine readable representations are flagged. Rather, we usually seem to define different URLs via extensions, for example, to define the different representations, which from this explanation seem like they should be reserved for different 'nouns' or 'concepts'.
Am I misunderstanding, or is that just the state of where we are at? And are there any plans to define those new 'verbs' at some point?
At the moment, generally you use GET and ask for a different Content-Type with an Accept header, or you say something like <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="foo.xml" />. In some cases you're expected to guess the alternate URL instead, maybe based on a document somewhere else, which is non-RESTian. However, it's pretty rare for someone to do what you suggest, which is to use new HTTP verbs in order to get different representations.