API Studio – build, test and share APIs in Swagger | Hacker News Reader

API Studio – build, test and share APIs in Swagger

apistudio.io

27 pointsprabhatjha8 comments

One of the developers here. We have a lot of plans for this. We will allow you to download client SDK and many different kinds of server code based on your API design. We think it's a good tool to shape your API before implementing all the business logic in your server/client code

I... think I like it? There needs to be a lot more documentation though, I'm not entirely clear what the output of this tool is... does it spit out code I can drop into a project of mine? Is it just a tool to mock up an API, and give some sort of playground for API consumers to use? Is it something else?

I think any of the above would be useful, I'm just not sure which one(s) this is trying to be.

You are correct that it needs more documentation and will have it asap. Two things you can do right now: 1. Using "Try this operation", you can hit your API and you will get a mock response. 2. Project-> Download Node.js Project gives you an express based server using swagger-node (https://www.npmjs.com/package/swagger)

Very cool, thanks for the reply!

This looks promising. I think there is value from separating the spec from the implementation details. Here is a dream workflow:

* version controlled canonical specs and documentation of API using apistudio.io

* use existing Swagger extensions to build out Swagger spec from implementation

* Some tool to automatically compare/verify canonical swagger spec with spec generated by framework plugin

I think this is a step backward.

Its amusing to be able to mock out some APIs but the fact that its just a mock makes it a waste of time.

There are already projects that let you automatically build out a swagger page from a jax-ws project (or your language of choice). Actually making the objects and stubbing out endpoints in code should be just as fast as playing with a new custom schema language.

But just looking at it as a way to just mock an API ignores the possibilities. The idea is that by having a formal definition of an API, not only can you consider and develop the API interface in isolation from your implementation, but you can use the same language to generate documentation, client SDKs, and server-side routing and request/response validation.

That final aspect is the thrust of swagger-node (https://www.npmjs.com/swagger) where we can take a Swagger document and use it as the basis of a dynamic (ie. not code-gen) Node.js API server. In the future, we'll also move beyond validation and routing to utilize extensions to declaratively provide other API services that are necessary but tangential to the business logic.

Deleted comment

Reply on news.ycombinator.com