API-first development maturity framework

1

JSON Server

In this approach, you manually create mocks to build the API client. The most traditional version of this approach involves creating mock responses in the form of JSON examples, while recent frameworks allow you to run mock servers based on those JSON examples and some additional custom configuration. This is the most traditional approach to building API clients, but also the most common to this date, and sadly also the most error-prone. As we discussed earlier, JSON Examples tend to be incomplete and often wrong. They’re also a maintenance burden and become deprecated as soon as the API changes. The biggest limitation of this approach is that it doesn’t take advantage of a full API specification, and as the API design changes, there’s a potentially growing drift between JSON examples and the actual API.

#Development #Online Services #API Tools 44 social mentions

2

API Blueprint

A common complaint about OpenAPI is that it’s difficult to learn and to read. Consequently, over the years we’ve seen many alternatives to OpenAPI, such as RAML, WADL, API Blueprint, and others. The problem with many of these alternatives is that in most cases they aren’t really more readable or easier to learn. Simpler description languages also tend to support less capabilities for documenting API features. Finally, being less standard, those alternatives have smaller communities, and smaller ecosystems of tools and frameworks than OpenAPI, which makes for a poor development experience.

#API Design #API Tools #API Prototyping 9 social mentions