Boris Eetgerink

February 22, 2023

RESTful SPA = Hypermedia Driven Application

When I coined the term RESTful SPA and started doing more research on how to implement it I came across the book Hypermedia Systems, written by the creators of htmx. In it, they describe the RESTful SPA, but name it a Hypermedia Driven Application (HDA). I now think that's how the RESTful SPA should be named. There are two reasons why I think changing the name is appropriate.

Initially, when describing the RESTful SPA, I had a rich HTML web application in mind with SPA-like functionality, but one that follows the REST principles. I think I focused too much on the SPA aspects, while the hypermedia (HTML etc.) and REST aspects are much more important. An HDA can be enhanced to have SPA-like functionality, but that's a bonus, not the goal in itself.

Another reason I now prefer the name Hypermedia Driven Application is that I think there should be a convergence on the name of the architecture that competes with SPA.

So, when building a new web application, will you choose SPA or HDA?

About Boris Eetgerink

Hey, this is my C# .NET blog. I don't have a comments system, but you can contact me at boriseetgerink at hey dot com.