What is the best technology to build REST APIs?

When building a REST API, the first question that comes to mind is: What is the best tool for this task? Obviously you want the best of the best to make your development a success, but it all depends on the requirements of the project and the environment. After defining this, then you are ready to search for the best technology to work with APIs.

Check out these tools to design REST APIs

Swagger

It's a great tool for designing and documenting REST APIs, they explained in a Medium article published by Java Revisited. “Swagger provides a standard format for describing REST APIs. By following those rules, you can create REST API documents to share between product managers, testers, and developers, but they can also be used by various tools to automate API-related processes.

“It is also known as the Open API Specification and is currently the most popular way to create RESTful API definitions. With these definitions, you can create sophisticated auto-generated documentation, build SDKs in multiple languages, and perform automated tests", they added.

Mulesoft 

This technology offers the Anypoint Designer for the design of REST APIs in an agile and simple way. “While REST can be used over almost any protocol, it generally leverages HTTP when used for web APIs. This means that developers do not need to install additional libraries or software to take advantage of a REST API design”, Mulesoft explained on its website.

“This freedom and flexibility inherent in REST API design allows you to create an API that meets your needs while also meeting the needs of very diverse customers. Unlike SOAP , REST is not limited to XML, but can return XML, JSON, YAML, or any other format depending on what the client requests. And, unlike RPC, users are not required to know the names of specific procedures or parameters in a specific order", they added.

API Connect

It is the environment offered by IBM for the creation and management of APIs. An enterprise-grade platform from IBM to create, secure, manage, share, monetize and analyze custom APIs found on-premises and in the cloud.

It offers high security standards and allows the management of the entire life cycle of internal, external and third-party APIs.

Akana API Platform

“It supports activities related to the configuration, administration and support of application and API owners and all other users of the platform”, Akana explained on its website.

And he added in the article the following: “It has many features and capabilities to support activities such as logging in and out, configuring applications and APIs, creating contracts between applications and APIs, creating discussions and reviews, commenting on discussions and reviews, creating and managing groups. such as application and API teams. Outreach groups, and many others.”

There are not only tools for creating or designing REST APIs, but also for testing, such as the following:
 

Postman

“It is probably the most popular tool for testing your REST API. If you take a look at their website, you'll find that Postman is used by 5 million developers and over 100,000 businesses to access 130 million APIs each month. It is also feature rich and supports all stages of the REST API life cycle. Through design, testing, and full production, Postman is there for faster, easier API development, without the chaos,” they detailed on Medium's Java Revisited blog.

RESTAssured

“Testing and validating REST services in Java is more difficult than in dynamic languages ​​like Ruby and Groovy. REST Assured brings the simplicity of using these languages ​​to the Java domain,” the company explained on its website.

At Rootstack, we have expert REST API development engineers and developers. Do you have more questions about this topic? Contact us!

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