[krsyoung]

IvanGoncharov, you've done much work in this space in trying to innovate around Web APIs (thanks for that!).

I think realityking nailed it in terms of the API community needing to define compelling use cases. The catch 22 here is that it is hard for people to innovate around API specifications when they are so hard to get! Per the SDKs ... what if there was a NPM.org or rubygems equivalent of high quality SDKs that get automatically generated whenever I push a new API specification? That seems like it could be cool.

And your example of automated composition is fantastic! Curious if you are able to share how much work it is for you to get access to the specifications in order to make this possible? If we invented a common practice to publish something like api.company.com/spec.yaml could you have spent a lot more time on making cool integrations vs mining specs?

[wing328hk]

Per the SDKs ...

If you've a Swagger/OpenAPI spec, you can use Swagger Codegen (https://github.com/swagger-api/swagger-codegen), a free and open-source project, to generate API clients (SDKs) in C#, Ruby, PHP, Java, ObjC, etc.

Here is an example: https://github.com/wing328/petstore-php

You can also use Swagger Codegen to generate server stub in SpringMVC, PHP Slim and more.

Disclosure: I'm a top contributor to Swagger Codegen.

(To convert RAML, API blueprint, WSDL, etc to Swagger/OpenAPI spec 2.0, please try https://github.com/lucybot/api-spec-converter - an open-source converter written in NodeJS)

[IvanGoncharov]

> The catch 22 here is that it is hard for people to innovate around API specifications when they are so hard to get!

Yes, this is exactly the problem which I try to solve with my collection.

> Per the SDKs ... what if there was a NPM.org or rubygems equivalent of high quality SDKs that get automatically generated whenever I push a new API specification?

You can run the same tool on API owner side you don't need to publish your spec for that. I did a couple of interviews with API owner and they fear to loose control over SDKs, Docs, etc.

> Curious if you are able to share how much work it is for you to get access to the specifications in order to make this possible?

No, it's public info since my entire work is open-sourced under MIT license. I try to make process automatic as much as possible, so it starts from scraping. For example, I scrape Github for Swagger specs: https://morph.io/IvanGoncharov/API_specifications When I need to filter test, example, etc. APIs and find specs for real-life APIs. But get spec source is just first step, I need to fix errors in it(~80% have them), get additional info(logo, link to API key registration, etc.). But most time consuming is update them every day. My update/convert/validation scripts not ideal so I need to manually inspect all changes.

> ould you have spent a lot more time on making cool integrations vs mining specs?

Actually not I learn a lot from it, for example, you can fix all mistakes in API owner specs. Instead, you should give them a tool which will automatically inspect API spec and output errors/warnings/recommendations/hints. Together with my friend we working on OpenAPI/Swagger linter.

If you want to discuss more here is my Skype(ivangon4arov) and Hangouts([e-mail]) or APIs.guru public chat https://gitter.im/APIs-guru/api-models