If you have ever used the Flickr API, you'll be familiar with their API Explorer. It is an awesome tool, that allows you to view the documentation for each API method, and the killer feature, being the execution of that API method (with a form to populate any request parameters). It even picks up when you are logged in, and completes the authentication part on your behalf. Gowalla has a similar API Explorer that is also really good.
Are there are tools for WCF that will auto-generate such an API Explorer, free or commercial?
Currently, we use Fiddler to build the JSON requests, but I would like to publish these service contracts, and allow potential developers to play around with them via a web based API explorer.
I am aware of the WCF Web HTTP Service Help Page, which I am using (and is awesome), but it is the API Explorer part that I am interested in.
You may want to look at I/O Docs - an open-sourced interactive documentation system for RESTful web APIs that any API owner can use to deploy for their own documentation. It runs on Node.js and uses Redis as a data store.
https://github.com/mashery/iodocs
Example: developer.klout.com/iodocs, developer.rottentomatoes.com/iodocs
It uses JSON schema based files to define API endpoints, method and parameters. Based on these JSON files, it generates a client interface that developers can use to learn and explore your API. API calls can be executed directly from the documentation interface, producing formatted responses.
It's Open-sourced, so you can be assured of regular updates and improvements. In fact this past weekend, Brandon West from SendGrid (who use I/O docs to power their documentation), created and open sourced the UI to create/edit the JSON schema files for I/O Docs. So you don't have to manually create the JSON files anymore.
https://github.com/brandonmwest/iodoctor
Not exactly what you were looking for, but....
WCF provides something called the WCF Test Client, for this purpose.
If you install Visual Studio, you get it. For example, for VS2008, installed in the usual place, you can find the WCF Test Client (WcfTestClient.exe) in the following location:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\
Take a look at Apigee: http://apigee.com/
Related
Is there any solution to automatically generate a web UI from a REST API?
I found Swagger codegen but it generates a client for the API, not a UI.
I need a basic UI, allowing directly from the browser to use the different endpoints and display the response prettily. Something like a basic Postman that would be directly integrated into my website.
I don't have constraint about how the generation is done. Can be done once at build time, or at runtime on server side or on client side.
I've heard good things about retool.com, it seems to do what you need.
I am currently looking at implementing feature toggles using ff4j for our application. We want to have a remote central config app which will hold all the features in it and the applications will talk to this central config app via REST to get the features. We will not be able to leverage Spring Cloud Config or Archaius for this purpose.
I went through the documentation and it seems there is a support for HttpClient (https://github.com/ff4j/ff4j/wiki/Store-Technologies#httpclient). But I couldn't find any sample for the same. Can someone please let me know if I can leverage this method to build my feature store from a REST endpoint. Also, I would appreciate if someone could point me to a sample of this.
This is a common pattern.
A component holds the Administration UI (console) and the REST API. You can call it the "Admin Component". For security reasons It may be the only component to have access to persistance unit (any of the 15 DB implementation available)
For the "admin component" HERE is sample using standAlone spring-bppt application using JDBC DB, and HERE you find a simple web application.
The REST API can be secured using credentials user/password and/or API Key. More information HERE
All microservices access the REST API as clients and request feature store. You will need the dependency ff4j-webapi-jersey2x or ff4j-webapi-jersey1x that hold the client http> Then you can define the store using :
FeatureStoreHttp storeHTT = new FeatureStoreHttp("http://localhost:9998/ff4j");
Warning : Please consider using cache to limit overhead introduce by accessing the REST API at each feature usage. More info on cache HERE
I'm new to this api documentation era.
Vising this api documentation, I get to post and query data. I understand that's a demo api documentation with swagger.
But what happens with real world API documentation? do I have a documentation in demo.api.myawesome.com and actual api on api.myawesome. com using different data stores?
But again digging deeper, I got to find out that an api can be self documenting using swagger libraries. This seems like both api and documentation are using the same data store which can't be the case.
What am I missing here?
From the Swagger website:
Swagger is a set of rules (in other words, a specification) for a format describing REST APIs. The format is both machine-readable and human-readable. As a result, it can be used to share documentation among product managers, testers and developers, but can also be used by various tools to automate API-related processes.
So yes, it uses the same "back end" as the actual API. It's just visualizing it, allowing you to interact with it via the Swagger UI.
If you mean Swagger UI - the "try it out" button sends requests to the server specified by the host property in your spec. If host specifies your production server, requests will be sent to production; if it points to a sandbox, "try it out" will use the sandbox. You may have a version of the spec for internal use that points to production, and a public version that points to sandbox.
Note that Swagger supports authentication as a way to ensure that only authorized users (e.g. your actual customers with valid credentials or API keys) can make API calls.
You can omit host from the spec to disable the "try it out" functionality - this way you can still have the API docs, just without the interactive part.
This is really basic.I want to implement a RESTful web API.
Now I know you can write custom applications and scripts to integrate with the API.
What I need to know:
In what languages can you write this API? C#, Java, php?
When building/programming a program that implements this API, is this the client and the software that issued the API the server? (eg. Dropbox would be the server and the custom app that integrates with the Dropbox API is the Client?
Thank you.
A REST API can be built in any programming language that allows you to handle HTTP requests (or can be attached to a Web server as a handler for requests). The two methods I've been using:
Stand-alone Windows service implementing a REST service using WCF
WEB server Apache + PHP
You are correct about the terminology. A program consuming a service is called the client, a program providing a service is called the server (while actually in the PHP approach, Apache would be the server as it is taking the request and having the script handle it).
Additional nitpicking: JQuery is not a language, but a framework to help you use some JavaScript features more easily.
On your comment Recap:
Close :-) The Client transfers JSON/XML/whatever to a server using HTTP requests. The Client can be written in any language that can perform HTTP requests.
On the server side, there needs to be some application that handles the HTTP requests (service), also written in any language, as long as it "speaks" HTTP.
The API is the definition of which operations are possible, for example, adding user accounts, getting the current time, etc. (this is what you define - what do you want your service to do?).
The JSON/XML/whatever that you transfer is the workload, the parameters for the API call. For example, if you want to add a new user to your system, the workload could be the new user name, the real name, the eMail address and some other details about the user. If the API call returns the current server time, you might not need any parameters at all, but you get back JSON/XML/whatever from the service.
The actual call being made is determined by the URL you call. For example, the URL for adding a user could be http://localhost/myrestservice/adduser and you'd perform a POST request against that URL with the required workload. For the time example, the URL could be http://localhost/myrestservice/getservertime and you'd perform a GET request against that URL.
I suggest that you read about how REST services actually work before you start, as I see some question marks on your face ;-)
Short:
API = available operations (=> URLs)
Parameters to API calls = JSON/XML/Plain Text/whatever
Client = calls the service through HTTP
Service = handles the calls, replies to client in response to HTTP requests
If you are a php programmer and familiar with Codeigniter framework then go here : Working with RESTful Services in CodeIgniter.
visit also : Rest Tutorial
First of all, you should begin with learning what is a RESTful API.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer
http://www.restapitutorial.com/
http://rest.elkstein.org/
In what languages can you write this API? C#, Java, php, jQuery?
You can write an API in any language. What can help is the framework you'd be using. JQuery is not a language, but a framework for integrating Javascript application in every web browser, so it won't help.
I'd advice you to use a microframework to write your first RESTful API, because they usually are easy to use and help focus on the important (bottle/flask in python, express in javascript, silex in php, spark in java or nina in C#)
When building/programming a program that implements this API, is this the client and the software that issued the API the server? (eg. Dropbox would be the server and the custom app that integrates with the Dropbox API is the Client?
You're right, the server is providing you the service, hence the API. The client is user to that API, and implementing it into something useful.
As most of the people stated already, you can do this in just about any language.
Might I suggest that you look into NodeJS? If so, check out Restify: http://mcavage.github.io/node-restify/
There's a nice community behind NodeJS and I think it's quite open to newcomers. Just try not to pick up bad habits from JavaScript pitfalls. If you're new to programming, I'd suggest reading some intro book.
good luck!
When creating a site/script to be on the client end of a RESTful API, what tools are available to create a "workbench" to explore the API, examining headers and responses while working through the design? Preferably one(s) that allow you to enter a custom endpoint, and create sample requests to see the responses. I recall seeing one nice workbench before, but its name has escaped me.
Re-found the one I remembered: The Apigee Console is a great interface for playing around with an existing API or building your own.
Mashery's I/O Docs is an open source workbench that you can deploy yourself on a Node.js server with Redis for storage.
If you have the wadl file of the ReST Services, you can load it in SOAP UI and use it.
EditedAnother much simpler tool Rest Client