During the development of #1850734: Make serialization formats configurable it turned out that it is difficult to implement a proper UI for REST module that covers all possible configuration options. Some reasoning:
- Implementing a fully featured UI slows down completion of REST module functionality.
- Configuring a RESTful API on your Drupal site is a highly advanced task.
- Writing/editing YAML files is simple for people that have the knowledge to configure a REST service on their site.
- Enabling and configuring a REST service interface is a one time task in the 80% use case, so even if there is a fully fledged UI it would be used rarely.
Therefore it might not make sense to develop a powerful UI in Drupal core at this point.
Possible solutions (add yours here):
- Leave the current list of checkboxes as they are, if such a checkbox is submitted just enable all possible configuration options for that resource.
- Replace the checkboxes with a textarea to edit the YAML configuration.
- Remove the REST UI entirely and point users to the YAML file in the module's help screen.
