Linting API Descriptions: Consistency is King for Developer Experience!
API descriptions are describing the surface of an API so that it is clear how an API works. It can be a good idea to check these descriptions against general good practices or against specific internal good practices for API designs. Linting is the process that allows those checks to be performed, by taking the description, letting a linter inspect it, and then get warnings or errors regarding the API design.
In this workshop, we look at the various motivations to use API linting. We then specifically look at HTTP-based APIs, OpenAPI as their description language, and Spectral as a popular open source linting tool. Spectral performs opinionated linting out of the box by having a set of build-in rules. Spectral allows users to add their own rules or completely replace the built-in rules. Spectral also supports modularization so that for example in larger organizations, different APIs can use different combinations of rules for various APIs. In this workshop we cannot give a complete tutorial of Spectral, but you will walk away with a good understanding of when to use it, how to apply it to your use cases, and what its general capabilities look like.
- Date
- 2025-02-11
- Time
- 13:00 - 13:50
- Conference / Event
- DeveloperWeek 2025
- Venue
- Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA