Tag Archives: api

26 Mar
2025

Right-Size Your RESTful API: More Flexibility Without GraphQL

If you publish a RESTful API and there are situations when you need less (or more!) detail in the API responses from your API – then this post is for you. When I run into this with the teams I advise, the initial problem statement usually arrives more like “We need to move to GraphQL”, but this is a solution, not a problem to solve. The problem usually turns out to be either or both of:

  • the API responses are simply too large for some of the clients or uses cases, users need to select just the fields they want
  • the API doesn’t have enough information in the response payload for this client or use case, users need to choose to include nested data

GraphQL is one way to achieve these things, but this post is about the RESTful way to provide the right level of detail in an API response. Continue reading →

17 Feb
2025

From HTTP to OpenAPI with Optic

I’ve been using Optic’s CLI, an OpenAPI tool that does a bunch of things including diffing OpenAPI descriptions and comparing HTTP traffic with OpenAPI. My use case was an established API that didn’t have an OpenAPI file yet – using Optic we could create one as a starting point, and then move to a design-first workflow to make the changes that I was there to help with. For this blog post, I’ve used the example of https://api.joind.in as an excellent representation of an API still in use, but without an OpenAPI file and not built with code that a code generator would recognise. Continue reading →
27 Jan
2025

Querying the GitHub GraphQL API

In a recent project around open source contributors, I wanted to take a look at which projects a particular user (actually a few of them, but I wrote a wrapper to repeat the process for each handle) maintains. GitHub doesn’t show this maintainer relationship, so instead I used the v4 GraphQL API and looked at pull request comments on repositories that the user has access to. I’m sharing my query and the Python script I used to make the API calls to. Continue reading →
09 Jan
2025

Save edits to OpenAPI as an Overlay

For teams that generate OpenAPI from their codebase, there’s a tough choice between maintaining rich and extensive content such as Markdown descriptions and examples in codebase annotations, or in making those changes to the generated file – and then losing them when the code changes and the file is regenerated. The new OpenAPI Overlay Specification defines a format for storing updates to an OpenAPI document, and there’s a new generation of tools to make it easy to do, so let’s take a look. Continue reading →
12 Dec
2024

OpenAPI Overlays to avoid API oversharing

Most APIs aren’t perfect. By design they are long-lived and may serve many audiences. I see a lot of organisations maintaining multiple versions of APIs, or simply not documenting some of the endpoints to avoid them being included in the published documentation and confusing users. The problem of API redaction is a real one in most organisations, and it goes unsolved or is solved in a way that causes ongoing friction. I’ve helped a few API projects to solve this problem with the new OpenAPI Overlay specification so I thought I’d share! Continue reading →
09 Oct
2024

Open Standards for APIs

I work or have worked with APIs of all sorts of standards, sometimes many standards at once – or none. Each standard exists for a purpose and might be a great fit, or a terrible fit for other purposes. Today’s post is a recap of some of the common API standards around and what you need to know about each one. Continue reading →
18 Jun
2024

API Description Pipelines

Working on API tools, I get to see inside lots of different organisations’ API projects and processes. Every scenario is different, but a common theme is that many companies use a more complicated API description workflow than you see in conference slide decks! Without sharing any one organisation’s secrets, this article shares a rundown of some typical steps that might show up in an API description pipeline. Continue reading →
11 Jan
2024

API Linting Levels

I’ve been thinking about API linting lately, partly because I work on a tool for API linting in my day job, and partly because I get quite a lot of questions from teams wanting to improve their API quality. The “best” ruleset depends entirely on your context, where you are in your API practice journey, and how much you want to invest in the API in question. I typically use a 4-levels model of API linting readiness, and I’m sharing them so that you can find yourself on the map and see where you might go from here. Continue reading →
28 Nov
2023

Add OpenAI flags to OpenAPI descriptions

With OpenAI’s new Actions feature allowing you to get a GPT that uses your own API, many new doors are open. However giving an AI an access token the keys to your API and telling it to have fun may lead you to realise that one of the doors available leads to the empty lift shaft of overwritten data, or the bottomless well of cloud bill shock. To reduce the risks, OpenAI supports an extension x-openai-isConsequential that you can add to your OpenAPI description, to indicate which endpoints should not be called without a human confirmation step.

I’m not doing much with OpenAI right now, but I do plenty with OpenAPI and the question “how do I add this field to my existing API description?” is one that I can answer! What’s more, you can use the advice in this post to add other extensions or additions to your OpenAPI descriptions using Overlays, this advice isn’t OpenAI-specific, but it’s used in the examples. Continue reading →

20 Nov
2023

When to version bump your OpenAPI description

I’ve heard a variety of bad advice (and some untruths!) regarding how to version your OpenAPI description lately. Rather than dig into those, instead I’ll share my opinion on how I like to version API descriptions in my own projects. Every API project is different, but perhaps there’s something here that can help your project too. Continue reading →