RAML 1.0 Is Here

Category : News , Tooling , Updates

It’s a big day for RAML. We’re excited to announce the publication of the RAML 1.0 (RC) spec, as well as the launch of a gorgeous new RAML.org site. In addition, our community is now launching a set of brand new development tools that support RAML 1.0 as well as 0.8. Here’s what you need to know.

What’s new with RAML 1.0?

RAML has always been about making it easy for developers to manage the whole API lifecycle from design to implementation to operation and sharing. It’s a concise, intuitive language for specifying APIs that allows developers to only write what they need to define an API, drawing from and contributing to commonly-used patterns, such as the YAAS (SAP hybris) pattern library.

With RAML 1.0, we’ve added a clean new data modeling language, enhanced support for examples, strongly-typed annotations that allow extending an API spec in a controlled manner, and overlays and extensions to further modularize the API and keep interface and implementation separate. In particular, annotations and overlays can make it a cinch for partners or third party collaborators to attach testing, monitoring, and client and server generation to APIs based on their RAML specifications. The significant enhancements in RAML 1.0 vs RAML 0.8 are highlighted in the new web site.

The full spec is live and can be accessed here. We’ll keep it in an RC (Release Candidate) state until later in November, to catch and clarify any gray areas and corner cases, and clean up some of the language, before declaring it final. It starts out with a quick tour of what’s new, before diving into the meat and illustrating each section with informative examples.

Introducing a refreshed RAML.org site

With the rapid growth around RAML, we needed a site that could keep up with that pace. We redesigned the site from the ground up to make the specs more accessible, and our community projects more visible. The result: a site that’s worthy of our developer community. You can check it out today, at raml.org.

You might note that it’s not just a static site. Beyond the content and the community aspects, it embeds a machine-generated specification of RAML 1.0 as well as a web version of the API workbench described below. Much of the RAML content on the site is live – edit it and try!

What’s a spec without tools?

Our workgroup members and several key RAMLers from the community have pitched in to build some exciting new development tools for RAML 1.0 (as well as 0.8).

Recall from our last blog post that RAML 1.0 was developed in conjunction with an API Workbench that allowed us to test out the candidates for the next version of RAML and quickly iterate until the new RAML really hummed. Today, that API Workbench is being launched as a public beta, so check it out at APIWorkbench.com. It’s a plugin to GitHub’s eminently hackable Atom editor so it’ll be a proud addition to your professional desktop toolset.

Also available today are a pair of very capable RAML parsers, one for JavaScript (and TypeScript), and one for Java. They both support RAML 1.0 as well as RAML 0.8, and the JavaScript one has a few additional capabilities up its sleeve. Check out their repos for more information.

And then there’s the broader ecosystem of independent developers and commercial vendors, many of whom have been getting excited about this next version of RAML – so expect to hear a lot more soon, and we’ll be retweeting and blogging about it on raml.org too. Follow @ramlapi and #RAML for updates from the ecosystem.

We hope you’re as excited as we are to usher in a new wave of innovation for the RAML community. So, check out RAML.org, APIWorkbench.com and the new parsers for JavaScript and Java. See you on the forums!

– Jaideep Subedar (Cisco), Kevin Duffey (VMWare), and Uri Sarid (MuleSoft), on behalf of the RAML Workgroup