Get your whole team to write RAML 1.0 with Restlet Studio

API definitions are the single source of truth in contract-driven API projects

Teams are increasingly adopting a contract-driven approach for their API projects, in which the first step is to design a service’s REST API, before moving on to the implementation phase.

Two keys to successful API design reside in good communication among the API’s stakeholders, and in facilitating documentation and testing of the API, which all too often become burdens for developers.

API definition languages like RAML 1.0 are the foundation for contract-driven API projects. So what do tools like Restlet Studio bring to the table?

API platforms enable collaborative workflows for the entire API lifecycle

API platforms like Restlet’s reduce the cost and complexity of adopting a contract-driven approach by solving a number of problems that aren’t related to your main business but are essential in order to succeed.

For example, by importing your RAML 1.0 definition into Restlet Studio, anyone in your team is able to edit it without learning RAML’s textual syntax. This is thanks to Studio’s user friendly and collaborative GUI.

Click on the RAML 1.0 tab at the bottom and preview what the final definition will look like.

Once you’ve made your changes to a definition, you can export it back into textual RAML 1.0 format, or any other of the supported supported formats.

The contract-driven approach makes it easy to bootstrap your API documentation and code

The benefits of a contract-driven approach with a language like RAML 1.0 is that you get a lot for free once you’ve jumped onboard.

Typically you can look forward to automatically generating documentation, as well as source code stubs for both the client and server side.

Restlet’s platform provides solutions on both accounts. You get free hosted API documentation which is optimized for reading by API consumers, and hosted by Restlet. You can also generate SDKs for Java, Android, iOS, Node.JS, Angular.JS, and more.

Your API definition can help check that an API is conform to the designed contract

By generating API integration tests based on your API contract, you’ll be able to check that the server implementation is conform to the original API contract you designed.

Restlet saves you time on this thanks to the Client module. Try for yourself by clicking the “Try in Client” button next to any of your API’s operations from within Restlet Studio’s GUI.

To learn more about Restlet Studio, either check out this short video introduction or jump right in by clicking on the link below. You can try out the entire platform for free.