When building hypermedia-driven REST APIs using Spring HATEOAS, key decision involves choosing between Resource, EntityModel, and RepresentationModel for modeling API responses.
Resource, which was deprecated, combined domain objects and hypermedia links but has been replaced by clearer abstractions like EntityModel and RepresentationModel for better flexibility.
EntityModel wraps a single domain entity allowing attachment of hypermedia links and is recommended for single resource embedding data.
RepresentationModel serves as a base class for responses that don't contain a domain entity, ideal for returning links or metadata without embedding an entity.