Effective API Lifecycle Management
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The document discusses effective API lifecycle management using the OpenAPI Specification (OAS). It describes the stages of an API lifecycle including design, development, testing, deployment and versioning. It identifies challenges around collaboration, documentation, security and testing. It recommends using OAS to drive quality at all stages and details how OAS can help with versioning, automation, change management, extensibility, reusability, compatibility and verifiability. The key takeaways are to not reinvent the wheel, prepare for changes, have a process, and put quality at the center of the API lifecycle.
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Effective API Lifecycle Management
- 1. Effective API Lifecycle Management | Delivering On Your Promise
- 2. 2 Introduction Solutions Engineer with SmartBear Experience in web development, software testing and operations Current focus is on API design and testing tools From Galway in the west of Ireland Joe Joyce
- 3. The OpenAPI Specification (OAS)
- 4. 4 The OpenAPI Specification OpenAPI Specification (formerly Swagger Specification) is an API description format for REST APIs. An OpenAPI file allows you to describe your entire API: Available endpoints Operations on each endpoint Operation parameters Authentication methods Contact information, license, terms of use and other information. (You can find it on GitHub!) { }…
- 6. 6 Back-end & Front-end Development Testing Design vx.x Feedback ✔ Stub OAS Virtual Service Testcase Testcase Production V1.1 Docs V1.1 API A Sample API Lifecycle (with some extra quality embedded) SDKs
- 7. 7 • Planning and Design • Implementation and Testing • Deployment • Versioning and Deprecation Stages
- 8. Challenges
- 9. Collaboration • Getting non-technical stakeholders involved • Implementing a feedback loop • Implementing a sign-off procedure
- 10. Documentation • Coupling the technical specification with the user documentation • Ensuring the documentation is updated as soon as the specification changes • Make it easy for developers to consume the documentation
- 11. Security • Choosing a protocol • Integrating your OAS with a gateway • Controlling visibility of your API
- 12. Testing • Bringing API testing into your existing functional testing framework • Choosing a toolset • Ensure test coverage (all endpoints / operations have test cases built against them)
- 13. How Do We Tackle These Challenges? (Hint: don’t reinvent the wheel!)
- 14. 14 Embedding quality in your API lifecycle with the OAS • Use the OAS to drive quality at various stages • Make quality a priority and not an afterthought
- 15. 15 A good OAS can help to ensure good API hygiene… • Steps you can take to ensure you’re producing healthy APIs
- 16. 16 Versioning • Software needs version control, so do API specifications. • When endpoints / resources change • Security changes • API deprecation
- 17. 17 Automation • Deployment of a new endpoint / resource path • Creation of test cases • Generating implementation code • Updating proxies on our API gateways
- 18. 18 Change Management • Things will change! So have a plan. • New endpoints might be needed, new responses, new security requirements… • Having a process is always preferable to no process
- 19. 19 Extensibility • With a design first approach, changes happen at the specification level first • This allows teams to understand how changes might affect the API • It also makes it cheaper and quicker to rollback
- 20. 20 Reusability • Don’t reinvent the wheel! • Reuse what you can • Build APIs that are reusable by design
- 21. 21 Compatibility • The main goal of APIs is to allow systems to communicate with each other • This means integration testing is hugely important • A robust API definition helps with this
- 22. 22 Verifiability • A good software system should be testable • Testability starts at the design phase • This means implementation is more likely to match specification
- 23. Demo
- 24. 24 Key Takeaways • Don’t reinvent the wheel • Don’t get caught by surprise! • Changes will happen, so be prepared to deal with them • Having a process is better than not having one
- 25. 25 Back-end & Front-end Development Testing Design vx.x Feedback ✔ Stub OAS Virtual Service Testcase Testcase Production V1.1 Docs V1.1 API Put Quality at the Center of Your API Lifecycle! SDKs
- 26. Thank you! Any questions?
Editor's Notes
- As APIs continue to become a core focus of organizations, ensuring quality is a major factor at every stage, while also speeding up development. To embrace this reality, we must develop pragmatic approaches for closed-loop processes, outcome-oriented development, and effective change management techniques to deliver on the promise of APIs. Joe Joyce, Solution Engineer at SmartBear will discuss these modern issues and outline impactful approaches for you to resolve the daily challenges they present.
- Planning and Design Who are the users of the API? What functions should we expose? Implementation and Testing What protocol(s) should we use? What languages and frameworks should we build it with? How do we test it? Deployment What platform should we deploy our API on? What management platform? Do we need a gateway? Versioning and Deprecation What should constitute a new version of an API? How do we communicate a deprecated API?
- https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9b18/aff5a26446e2c179170f6888856e62954e76.pdf A good OpenAPI Specification can be used to drive quality at various points of your lifecycle. This means API quality is the main focus of teams from the very beginning of a API development, and keeps it at the center of all subsequent activities.
- https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9b18/aff5a26446e2c179170f6888856e62954e76.pdf It means taking steps to ensure you’re producing healthy APIs We’re already familiar with a lot of these in a general software quality sense; APIs shouldn’t be any different!
- When should we create a new version of an API specification?
- What can we automate using our OAS as a trigger?
- https://medium.com/good-api/api-change-management-2fe5bba32e9b Once your OAS leave design phase, other teams are going have inputs. Things will change! New endpoints might be needed, new responses, new security requirements You should ensure that we have processes in place to handles these changes. (Comments, notifications, review processes etc.)
- “…a system’s ability to have new functionality extended, in which the system’s internal structure and data flow are minimally or not affected.”
- Defining these reusable components at the specification level makes it easier to ensure implementations are consistent
- can help with this as it can be used in test case design and implementation. s
- An OAS specification can be used to model test cases on based on expected responses, accepted inputs and data types, security flows etc.