Tuesday 7 November 2017

ARC components in Mulesoft's API Console

I am proud to announce that web components that are used to build ARC are now also used to build Mulesoft's API Console.

MuleSoft's API Console is a full-fledged API documentation tool that generates mobile-friendly web documentation based on RAML (Restful API Modeling Language) documents. It is an open source, community driven application that can be easily adjusted to any environment.

Background


While working on atomizing Advanced REST Client to a set of web components internally in the company we've realized that both products can share the same code base. So over a year ago I've started working on new version of the API console. The task was to create a best in class usability for API documentation tool. That includes mobile friendliness, ergonomic design, ease of reading documentation and learning the API structure. From a developer standpoint API console should be easy to use as a standalone application ready to run on a web server but also as a embeddable HTML element that can be added to existing products (like existing web pages with API documentation).

The result


API console is a web application based on web components standard. Therefore it can be used in any web environment and can work with any web framework (though some frameworks - like React - may require additional customizations). We've created a set of tools to make it even easier to build the API console from a RAML file. Our CLI tool can be used to generate production ready standalone website with API documentation or to generate development preview of the documentation while working on RAML. There also is the api-console-builder npm module that can be used in node environment to build the same API console.

Try new API console and design your APIs with RAML. I'll be happy to hear a feedback from you.

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