embeddeds without self-link shouldn't be dropped

[beuss]

When an embedded does not contain a self-link, a warning is printed and the item is ignored. While the spec looks contradictory, the embedded should not be ignored
The HAL spec is clear on this point:

The reserved "_links" property is OPTIONAL.

The HAL-FORMS spec looks contradictory since it states:

[the link element] is a RECOMMENDED element

and then (while this looks to break HAL backward compatibility)

Every HAL-FORMS document SHOULD have at least one link element in the collection with a key value set to self
[…]
Clients MAY reject a HAL-FORMS document that does not contain a link element with the key value set to self.

It recommends to defaults self-link to the URI used for the request but this looks incompatible with current cache handling in ketting since URI is used as a cache key

Is there any hope to have this behavior fixed?

[evert]

Ketting right now does not not aim to be a perfect client for every use-cases of HAL. Ketting is opinionated and needs certain things to be true to fit its architecture. We also need to support a number of different formats, and find a lowest common denominator.

This sometimes means trade-offs, and one of those trade-offs is is that if a hypermedia API (regardless of format) uses a concept of embedded/transcluded resources then it needs those resources to be globally identifiable through a URI.

If you have control over the server, I would suggest simply adding a self link pointing to something unresolvable like a urn: URI. Frankly I find the idea of using a subresource/embedded resource without a URI really strange, and wonder if this should not have been a regular property on your resource.

The only workaround I can see adding in Ketting in the future is to give users some way to get access to the raw underlying HAL response, but I have no immediate plans to do this.

For now I think it's best to close this, because I can't honestly say at the moment if this will ever become a priority, I'm sorry! The ugly thing you can do right now is call .fetch() directly on a resource but I totally understand this is annoying as you opt-out of all the other features.