Link headers vs link elements for RESTful JSON

Question

When building a RESTful / hypermedia API with JSON resources, it seems I have two options for specifying the hypermedia relationships between resources.

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Answer 1

• Link headers can be considered by intermediaries
• Link headers are compressed by SPDY
• Link headers are standard

They can even contain some JSON if needed! http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-nottingham-link-hint-00

This approach allows delivery at the same time in all responses:

• Link Headers containing hypermedia information
• a payload devoted to resource representation

Of course the resource representation may contain links encoded in various forms, but the use of Link headers can provide the most important part of the dynamic structure of your site.

What makes this solution definitively appealing is IMHO the "accept-post" hint.