A potential new version of hal

README.txt

I've been playing with the idea of combining the data array defined in application/collection+json 
(http://amundsen.com/media-types/collection/format/) with hal links for templated data.

Seems like a good way to keep the media type lightweight while allowing the api to specify the fields 
it would like passed to a given resource. 

I haven't really given much thought to an xml variation, but I took a stab at it as well. 

embedded-template.shal.json

{
  "_links": {
    "ex:basic": { "href": "/bleh" }
    "ex:search": { "href": "/search_for;{searchTerm}"}
    "ex:widget": { "href": "/widgets",
            "data": [
                {"name": "name",  "type": "string"}, 
                {"name": "description",  "type": "string"}
            ] }
  }
}

embedded-template.shal.xml

<resource href="/" xmlns:ex="http://example.org/rels/">
  <link rel="ex:basic" href="/bleh" />
  <link rel="ex:search" href="/search_for;{searchTerm}" />
  <link rel="ex:widget" href="/widgets">
     <data name="name" type="string" />
     <data name="description" type="string" />
  </link>
</resource>

Personally, I don't like the idea of using link as a templated write control - I'd much rather see this under a separate _controls and <control> ... </control> in JSON and XML respectively

That sounds reasonable. I can definitely see the advantage of separating those concerns. I started with a _template on the root json object that contained the data array, but wasn't sure whether it'd be preferable to add a new root element or to build on the existing ones.