apiclarity VS RESTest

We'll install APIClarity into a Kubernetes cluster to test our API documentation. We're using a Kind cluster for demonstration purposes. Of course, if you have another Kubernetes cluster up and running elsewhere, all steps also work there.

If you go to APIClarity, the first thing you’ll see is the source code (Figure 1), followed by some documentation at the bottom.

This feature is available in the open-source tool APIClarity, as part of the OpenClarity initiative.

Hi, I would also like to add another tool I'm contributing to at work (cisco) called APIClarity [1]. It aims at reconstructing swagger specifications of REST microservices running in K8S, but can also be run locally.

This is a challenging task and we don't support OpenAPI v3 specs yet (we are working on it).

Feel free to have a look, and get ideas from it :)

We'll also be presenting it at next Kubecon 2022.

[1]: https://github.com/openclarity/apiclarity

For example, APIClarity is a tool that observes all of the API traffic within your Kubernetes environment. Based on traffic observation, APIClarity infers an OpenAPI description for those APIs. This is especially helpful if the API creator never defined or provided such a description. It also surfaces potential problems with existing APIs, such as requests made to undocumented, shadow APIs or continued use of deprecated, zombie APIs. If you’re getting started on the path toward OAS compliance, then tools like APIClarity can be a great source of insight and observability.

The fundamental first step to solving this problem is to create an API spec and use it to audit and document the APIs your apps use. Ideally, we would create an API spec simply by observing API traffic in real-world applications. In the past, there was no simple, scalable, and open-source tooling capable of doing this. Now, we have APIClarity—an open-source API traffic visibility tool for Kubernetes (K8s) clusters. It’s purpose-built to address the gap and enable API reconstruction through observation.

Because the OpenAPI Specification is so widely used and agreed upon across the industry, numerous tools have been built to simplify the task of API development. There are tools to validate requests (such as Dredd or RESTest), automate the writing of API documentation (such as Stoplight or DeveloperHub), and even generate SDK code for many client languages (such as APIMatic CodeGen or OpenAPI Generator). While an API developer can certainly go it alone and build without any assistance, it’s certainly helpful to have many toolchain options when building an OAS-conformant API.