title: HATEOAS: Should the server accept the hypermedia links in request payload
body: <p>So, we have adopted similar standards as HATEOAS in implementing our restful apis. We provide links in the response to allow the client to navigate or perform certain things. Now the question is,</p>
  
  <p>If the client wants to consume this response, make changes to some of the attributes of the resource and post it back to the server for an update, while not sanitizing the hypermedia links that were provided in the response. Should server accept this request payload as valid and ignore the hypermedia links in the request payload or should client be not allowed to send such a payload?</p>
  
  <p>Our only concern in allowing this is that if the payload is very big and the client is only make changes to a couple attributes then there is a performance overheard but the counter argument is that the client needs to sanitize responses in order to make subsequent requests.</p>
  
  <p>Can you please advice on what is the best practice?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks</p>