# Is it valid to exclude relationships from a relationships object?

**URL:** <https://discuss.jsonapi.org/t/is-it-valid-to-exclude-relationships-from-a-relationships-object/290>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [January 6, 2016, 1:01am UTC](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/t/is-it-valid-to-exclude-relationships-from-a-relationships-object/290 "2016-01-06T01:01:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andrewhavens](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discuss.jsonapi.org/andrewhavens/32/180_2.png) [@andrewhavens](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/u/andrewhavens)\
**Post date:** [January 6, 2016, 1:01am UTC](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/t/is-it-valid-to-exclude-relationships-from-a-relationships-object/290/1 "2016-01-06T01:01:03Z")

</div>

I have a resource that contains a lot of has-many “children” resources. I don’t want to include all of the relationships, only one specific (important) relationship (the “parent”).

```
{
  "data": {
    "type": "thing",
    "id": "1",
    "relationships": {
      "parent": { "data": { "type": "thing", "id": "9" } },
      "children": {
        "data": [
          { "type": "thing", "id": "1" },
          { "type": "thing", "id": "2" },
          { "type": "thing", "id": "3" },
          { "type": "thing", "id": "4" },
          // ...and so on
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

```

Is it valid to create a relationships object that only contains some of the relationships? I’d like to be able to return something like this:

```
{
  "data": {
    "type": "thing",
    "id": "1",
    "relationships": {
      "parent": { "data": { "type": "thing", "id": "9" } }
    }
  }
}

```

Is that valid, even though it does not mention all of the known relationship types? Or do I need to change anything in the way that I request this structure (include params, etc)? Or can I return it this way by default?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ethanresnick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/45deac/32.png) [@ethanresnick](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/u/ethanresnick)\
**Post date:** [January 6, 2016, 8:21pm UTC](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/t/is-it-valid-to-exclude-relationships-from-a-relationships-object/290/2 "2016-01-06T20:21:44Z")

</div>

JSON API is (by my reading) a bit vague about whether it’s ok for the server to remove a relationship entirely without the client requesting that it be removed. Doing that might be allowed if, e.g. for permissions reasons, the client really shouldn’t be able to see a certain relationship, but I think it’s better to return a consistent list of relationships if possible.

So, with that in mind, there are two options that are definitely compliant:

1. The client can explicitly ask to only get the `parent` relationship using [the `fields` parameter](http://jsonapi.org/format/#fetching-sparse-fieldsets)).

2. The server can include the `children` relationship, but only provide limited information about it. For example, if the concern is about sending unnecessary data, its perfectly valid for the server to send the `children` relationship like this:

```auto
"children": { 
  "links": { 
    "self": "http://example.com/thing/1/relationships/children"
  }
}

```

Then, the client can use the self link to fetch a list of the type–id pairs in the relationship. I think this is the option you want.

If you really can’t provide any links, JSON API even allows the relationship to be represented as:

```auto
"children": { "meta": {} }

```

But this is obviously not very useful to the client, so I wouldn’t recommend it.