[[other-representations]]
= Other Representations

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Sometimes though you may want to extend or change the representations generated.
This might be because you want to write a RESTful client that uses a particular library (say a JavaScript library or web components) that can only handle representations in a certain form.

Or, you might want to have Apache Isis generate representations according to some other "standard", of which there are many:

* Mike Kelly's http://stateless.co/hal_specification.html[HAL] specification
* Mike Amundsen's http://amundsen.com/media-types/collection/[Collection+JSON] specification
* Kevin Swiber's https://github.com/kevinswiber/siren[Siren] specification
* Steve Klabnik's http://jsonapi.org/[JSON API] specification
* Gregg Cainus' https://github.com/cainus/hyper-json-spec[Hyper+JSON] specification
* the W3C's https://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld/[JSON-LD] specification
* Markus Lanthaler's http://www.markus-lanthaler.com/hydra/[Hydra] specification.

A good discussion about the relative merits of several of these different hypermedia formats can be found https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/api-craft/NgjzQYVOE4s/EAB2jxtU_TMJ[here].

Or, of course, you may have your own internal specification that you wish to use.

Supporting any of these alternative representations can be achieved by providing a suitable implementation of
`ContentNegotiationService`.
The existing implementations can be used as a starting point.

[CAUTION]
====
Any custom implementations will need to access the internal APIs for the Apache Isis metamodel.
You should be aware that these are not formal API.
====

