concept RAML in category api

This is an excerpt from Manning's book Irresistible APIs: Designing web APIs that developers will love. Login to get full access to this book.

Figure 1.13. RAML from MuleSoft. RAML supports Markdown, as Blueprint does, but the schema that’s created is more expressive than Blueprint. Additionally, like the OpenAPI framework, they support abstract objects more natively than Blueprint, making it easier to implement and maintain consistent APIs across a complex system.

Finally, figure 1.13 shows an example of a RAML schema model. MuleSoft is an API management system, and RAML is its schema modeling language. This language is designed to encourage reuse of best practices among API providers. Additionally, the language and tooling are designed to make API discovery and exploration easier. As with Apiary, templates and tooling are provided by MuleSoft to soften the learning curve.

Figure 1.13. RAML from MuleSoft. RAML supports Markdown, as Blueprint does, but the schema that’s created is more expressive than Blueprint. Additionally, like the OpenAPI framework, they support abstract objects more natively than Blueprint, making it easier to implement and maintain consistent APIs across a complex system.

Now that you have the basics of a general schema, we’ll look at the specifics of two of the main schema modeling frameworks, starting with RAML. The specification for RAML, from the working group guiding its path, is as follows:

The RESTful API Modeling Language (RAML) is a concise, expressive language for describing RESTful APIs. Built on broadly used standards such as YAML and JSON, RAML is a non-proprietary, vendor-neutral open spec.