[HN Gopher] Analyzing the OpenAPI Tooling Ecosystem
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       Analyzing the OpenAPI Tooling Ecosystem
        
       Author : handrews
       Score  : 50 points
       Date   : 2024-09-21 19:13 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (modern-json-schema.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (modern-json-schema.com)
        
       | throwaway2016a wrote:
       | I find it striking that in the same day I saw a video about how
       | someone "Made an API in 20 minutes with one prompt" and this. The
       | two approaches seem very divergent. One that is almost cavalier
       | about things like security, standards, etc and another that is
       | (almost) over engineered.
       | 
       | One observation, is that I there are two trains of thought. Using
       | OAD (Open API Descriptions) as a source of truth and generating
       | code from there or treating OAD as an artifact that comes out of
       | some other tools.
       | 
       | I personally see OpenAPI as kind of a glue that can allow
       | different tooling to be able to speak the same language.
       | 
       | Overall I found the linked Moonwalk[1] document to be more
       | interesting. But there is some interesting analysis to be found
       | in this article as well.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.openapis.org/blog/2023/12/06/openapi-
       | moonwalk-20...
        
         | handrews wrote:
         | Yeah this article is more about how we (the OpenAPI Initiative)
         | are designing the next versions of the OpenAPI Specification
         | than it is about how to use it. The diagram does include both
         | an OAD generator and editor, intended to encompass both code-
         | first and description-first (which doesn't make too much
         | difference for this blog post). The Moonwalk article is
         | definitely more general purpose! This is "OK Moonwalk has a
         | great vision, but how do we actually make it a real spec?" I've
         | been using variations of this diagram in the weekly Moonwalk
         | calls for the past month or two.
        
           | throwaway2016a wrote:
           | > OK Moonwalk has a great vision, but how do we actually make
           | it a real spec?
           | 
           | I'm not sure the article really succeeds if that was the
           | goal. I suspect that there might be some aspects of the
           | discussion that are taking place that are missing from the
           | article making it a little difficult for someone who wasn't
           | in those discussions to connect the dots.
           | 
           | Don't get me wrong, I think the article had some useful
           | pieces in it, I just think if that was the goal of the
           | article it could possibly use some additional framing for
           | people who don't have the full context.
           | 
           | With that said, I really appreciate transparency into the
           | thought process!
        
             | handrews wrote:
             | > I just think if that was the goal of the article it could
             | possibly use some additional framing for people who don't
             | have the full context.
             | 
             | It's always a struggle to figure out how much explanation
             | to put in before people see something like "20 minute read"
             | and just refuse to read it. (BTW I don't mind the critical
             | feedback at all- I'm just glad you found something useful
             | in it).
             | 
             | But keep in mind that _we_ haven't answered "how do we
             | actually make it a real spec?" either! This is a snapshot
             | of our efforts at this particular moment. Also, there's a
             | reason that this is "part one in a series" :-)
        
       | dgellow wrote:
       | Excellent article, I really like the diagrams
        
       | infocollector wrote:
       | Thanks for writing this! This nicely breaks it down into boxes
       | that OpenAPI deals with.
       | 
       | I still think OpenAPI usage is a bit confusing in general. For
       | example, I am still waiting for a better explanation of this
       | diagram with relation to a choice of backend (Python WSGI) +
       | frontend (JS) combinations. Perhaps someone here has a pointer
       | for me to read?
        
         | dgellow wrote:
         | If you haven't yet, I highly recommend to check FastAPI for
         | your python backend: https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/. OpenAPI is
         | a core part of it, making it simple to integrate with other
         | tools such as docs and clients generator
        
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