14 December 2013

Restful Specification

Being able to publish, consume, produce, describe, and visualize Restful Services implementation is key to community accessibility and feedback. One of the best ways to try out a subscription run API is to make the specification documentations available for users to browser and test the many design implications in a sandbox. In process, a rapid way of fixing issues can be formulated and the APIs are open for collaboration, improvement, and endorsement. Swagger is one such specification framework for REST API. It is quite fluid in scope and provides easy to use functionality when clients and documentations need to update  in sync with the server. Not only is it language agnostic but it provides an entry point for clients to understand the many details of a published API in a transparent way without the need to know server implementation. At same time, it provides insights into the parameters, methods, and models that utilize both JSON, XML as well as other document formats as prescribed in design.

Other options to Swagger include:
Mashery
Apiary
Mashape
3scale