In this post I’m sharing my notes for spec driven development and cover the basics on creating an API specification. Spec driven development is a development process where your application is built in two distinct phases.

• creation of the specification (design)
• development of code to match the spec(development)

What are the phases for spec driven development in the Mulesoft world?

• Design
• Simulate
• Feedback
• Validate

So what is an API Specification and how to create one?

– API specification and definition are interchangeble. API Specification is much more concerned with the overall behavior of the API, and how it links to other APIs.

– To create API Specification we use a language called RAML.

• RAML is a language for the definition of HTTP-based APIs that embody most or all of the principles of Representational State Transfer (REST).
• It is a non-proprietary language to build API specifications
• Data structure is hierarchical and by indentation not markup

Source: https://github.com/raml-org/raml-spec

Where can you start creating RAML?

• Design Center on the Anypoint Platform
• You can use Anypoint Studio
• API Workbench – installed as an Atom package – http://apiworkbench.com/

Some key design features of creating an API Spec on the Anypoint Platform

• Documentation is created from the RAML and shown in the API console
• A mocking service can be used in the API console to test the API
• Make an API discoverable by publishing it to the Private Exchange
• You can publish to the public(needs Mulesoft review)
• API portals are auto generated
• Automatically generated api endpoint is created that uses mocking service
• API portals can be shared to internal or external users
• Share the API to external developers by making portal public
• You can customize the public portal
  • logo
  • favicon
  • welcome text
  • fonts
  • image

What is a mocking service?

• it is an auto generated api endpoint to use for testing

Those are just the basics and will cover more on upcoming posts.