How to represent deeply nested objects/resources?

1

Hi, I’d like to know your thoughts on how to represent deeply nested objects.

From what I understand, all related objects should be returned from the relationships field. What is better when we have reasonably deep related object, relationships or attributes?

For example:

Representing it as a complex object:

{
  "data": {
    "type": "type-a",
    "id": 1,
    "attributes": {
      "type_b_list": [{
       "id": 2,
       "type_c_list": [{
         "id": 3,
         "type_d_list": [],
         "type_e_list": []
       }]
      }]
    }
  }
}

Representing proper relationships to follow the spec/sematics:

{
  "data": {
    "type": "type-a",
    "id": 1,
    "relationships": {
      "type_b_list": {
        "id": 2,
        "type": "type-b"
      }
    }
  },
  "included": [
    {
        "id": 2,
        "type": "type-b",
        "relationships": {
          "type_c_list": [
            {
              "id": 3,
              "type": "type-c"
            }
          ]
        }
    }
  ] 
}

The the second example, how does include work with deeply nested objects? What If I’d like to be able to return upto type-e depth (or even more)?

I don’t think having multiple round trips to get each related resource in separate request is feasible.

Other alternative would be to follow the JSON:API resource object structure (type/id/attributes etc.) in the example 1 when representing nested objects.

What do you think?

2

Your 2nd is example is the correct way, not the first one.

If you want to go deeper, you can also include your type-c resource since it is mentioned in your type-b resource under the included top-level member. Then, keep going until you reach type-e.