title: Conventions required of RESTful JSON API to be usable with Ember
body: <p>In the Ember <a href="http://emberjs.com/guides/models/">Models Introduction</a>, it is mentioned:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Without any configuration, Ember Data can load and save records and
    their relationships served via a RESTful JSON API, provided it follows
    certain conventions.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I'm getting started trying to use a token based, RESTful JSON API, which at first glance is not strictly RESTful. Few examples:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Authentication is implemented as <code>GET</code> <code>/api/authenticate?email=a@b.com&amp;password=pass</code></li>
  <li>Most of the API's return Status of 200 (response header) even on failure. The returned json contains additional fields <code>success</code> (boolean) and <code>code</code> (int) which indicate if the API failed or passed.</li>
  <li>The urls are not based on nouns (models). For example, a typical message edit operation which should conventionally be a POST to a url like <code>/api/message/1/edit</code> is implemented as GET  <code>/api/edit_message?id=1&amp;text=new</code></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>So, I was wondering if someone could list what these <code>certain conventions</code> are that are mentioned in the docs. This could help me understand if I could use ember-data or not.</p>