LinkDiscoverer exposes an API to find Links by their relation types in representations. Added JSONPath based base class and a DefaultLinkDiscoverer that finds Links based on the default rendering of our Jackson mappings.
Added Jackson 1 and 2 modules to render Link objects in a HAL-compliant way. Introduced custom Jackson mixins to avoid introducing new value objects for the representation model.
The rendering can be activated by simply registering Jackson1HalModule or Jackson2HalModule with the Jackson ObjectMapper.
Added Jackson 2 dependencies. Doubly annotated representation model classes with both Jackson 1 and Jackson 2 annotations. Added Integration tests for Jackson 2 marshaling provided by Jon. Polished template.mf.
EntityLinks allow accessing LinkBuilders or even Link instance based on components exposing REST resources for a particular domain type. The core implementation is ControllerEntityLinks that assumes a particular URI structure so that it can derive the URIs to be asked for per domain type. The domain type managed will be inspected from the @ExposesResourceFor annotation on a controller class. We provide a factory bean to allow configuring instances of ControllerEntityLinks based on a mapping annotation and LinkBuilderFactory.
Added infrastructure to activate automatic discovery of EntityLinks implementations through @EnableEntityLinks. This will automatically register ControllerEntityLinks instances for Spring MVC controllers annotated with @ExposesResourceFor as well as JAX-RS resources if JAX-RS is on the classpath. The mechanism essentially registers a DelegatingEntityLinks instance leveraging the Spring Plugin PluginRegistry mechanism to delegate to the actual EntityLinks instance actually registered for the entity type. It will become the primary EntityLinks bean in the ApplicationContext so that they can be autowired into client components safely.
Renamed UriComponentsLinkBuilder to LinkBuilderSupport and moved it from mvc into core package. slash(Object object) now transparently unwraps Identifiables<?>.
LinkBuilder and LinkBuilderFactory interface extracted from ControllerLinkBuilder for easier mocking and so that alternative implementations (such as for CXF) can be created.
Added correct equals(…)/hashCode() methods to PagedResource, PageMetadata. Polished toString() methods of ResourceSupport, Resource, Resources and PagedResources. Added factory method to PagedResources to easily create a plain instance from a set of entities.
Introduced Resource and Resources value objects. The former captures single entity instances but adds links to it. The latter does the same for a collection of entities. Added SPI interfaces ResourcePostProcessor and ResourcesPostProcessor to allow manipulating Resource and Resources instances.
Improve ResourceAssemblerSupport by introducing a dedicated method instead of an overload. Got rid of EntityId in the course. ControllerLinkBuilder now inspects type hierarchy for @RequestMapping annotations instead of the class only. Made links list in ResourceSupport final. Polished variable names and JavaDoc.
