The Exploitation of OpenAPI Documentation for the Generation of Web Frontends

Abstract

New Internet-enabled devices and Web services are introduced on a daily basis. Documentation formats are available that describe their functionalities in terms of API endpoints and parameters. In particular, the OpenAPI specification has gained considerable influence over the last years. Web-based solutions exist that generate interactive OpenAPI documentation with HTML5 JavaScript. They allow developers to quickly get an understanding what the services and devices do and how they work. However, the generated user interfaces are far from real-world practices of designers and end users. We present an approach to overcome this gap, by using a model-driven methodology resulting in state-of-the-art responsive Web user interfaces. To this end, we use the Interaction Flow Modeling Language (IFML) as intermediary model specification to bring together APIs and frontends. Our implementation is based on open standards like Web Components and SVG. A screencast of our tool is available at https://youtu.be/KFOPmPShak4.