Evolving HAL

I've decided to revise and update HAL after some feedback and pondering.

HAL is a hypertext format for m2m interaction. It provides the following hypermedia factors:

• Embedded Links (LE)
• Out-bound navigational links (LO)
• Templated Queries (LT)
• Link relations(CL)

HAL specifies two elements:

• link
• resource

Both elements share the following attributes:

• @rel
• @href
• @name

The link and resource elements differ in the following ways:

Link elements..

• The link element is intended for representing out-bound links and should be written with solo/self-closing tags.
• @href value of a link element may contain a URI template to express a templated query link.

Resource elements..

• The resource element is intended for representing the embedded state of other resources and should be written with open and close tags, with the embedded representation contained within.
• The root element must always be a resource with an @rel of self and an appropriate @href value.

Other rules:

• @name must be unique between all HAL elements (link + resource) with the same @rel value in a document, but should not be considered unique within the entire document. This means a link element cannot be referred to by @name alone (thanks to Darrel for this)
• The subject of an @rel is always directed at the closest parent resource element.
  e.g. A link that appears within an embedded resource relates to the embedded resource, and not the root resource.

Here is an example:



And here's how that might look in json: