The best api description languages, according to hackers
4 api description languages recommended in Hacker News comments over the past year, ranked by how many separate people recommend each one.
- Most recommendedOpenAPI Specification30 people recommend it
- Least regretTypeSpec11 recommend, 0 criticize
All api description languages
- OpenAPI SpecificationWidely used standard for describing REST APIs, letting tools generate code, docs and validation. Caveat: specs often go stale and tooling lags on newer versions.30recommend
- TypeSpecMicrosoft's API description language that generates Azure SDKs, docs and CLIs, and makes writing OpenAPI far less verbose. Critics say its syntax seems minimal and somewhat lacking.11recommend
- SkirProtobuf-style schema language with stricter types and safer compatibility defaults. Critics say migrating persisted data is hard and it still uses numeric field tags.7recommend
- SwaggerDevelopers recommend it for generating API docs and a GUI from definitions, and it pairs well with Zod. Critics say its out-of-band approach conflicts with REST.6recommend