OpenAPI Benefits

By Phil Sturgeon
Last update on July 25, 2024

OpenAPI is a game-changer for saving your team time and money. By automating routine tasks like creating detailed API documentation, generating client libraries and generating chunks of server-side code, even automating the checking of the API against style guides, it frees up your developers to focus on more important work. This means faster development and fewer hours spent on repetitive coding, which saves time and money as better quality APIs can be delivered quicker.

It also makes collaboration smoother and more efficient. With OpenAPI, you have a clear, consistent description of your API that everyone can follow. This reduces misunderstandings and miscommunications between different teams—whether they’re front-end, back-end, or QA. Fewer mix-ups mean less time fixing errors and more time building great features.

When it comes to testing and validation, OpenAPI shines by enabling automated testing against your API specifications. This catches bugs early in the development process, which is cheaper and easier to fix than issues found later on. Reliable, bug-free APIs lead to happy users and less downtime, saving you from costly fixes and lost customers.

Onboarding new developers is made a lot more efficient with OpenAPI. The detailed documentation helps new team members or customers quickly understand how your APIs work, learning about key validation rules, cutting down on the “time to first request” by sharing sample HTTP requests in curl or code samples in various programming languages. Faster onboarding means new hires can start contributing sooner, and customers can start paying for use sooner.

API Design-First #

In an API design-first world, OpenAPI allows you to describe your whole API from endpoints to examples before even writing the first line of code.

Using this approach, OpenAPI becomes the cornerstone of your API, and becomes the single source of truth in your organization. Code is based on what has been validated during the design phase, and the documentation is generated and synced with the OpenAPI document by deploying updated docs when new commits are merged.

Your team can collaborate at every step of the API design phase and leverage their workflow:

Code-first #

Obviously, we can’t talk about API Design-First without mentioning the previous popular approach of Code-First, as it can have some benefits as well.

If you need to deploy an API fast for a MVP, internal use or with few endpoints, spending time on API design before you start coding may not be necessary and may slow your delivery time.

As developers, we have our rooted habits and Code-First follows the historical development process. We put ourselves directly into coding, without the need to learn yet another language or design tools to create our APIs. Sometimes it is a great time saver.

Tools for OpenAPI #

There are many tools to help you get the most out of OpenAPI, at every step of the API life cycle, here is a selection of our preferred ones:

Editors #

Linters #

Documentation #

Mocking #

Testing #

Clients generator #

Observability #

Besides the ones mentioned above, here is an amazing and more exhaustive list of curated tools for OpenAPI: https://openapi.tools/

Give it a try #

Now that you know what OpenAPI is, try it out with one of the following OpenAPI documents.

Or why not learn to make your own, heading over to the next section: Understanding the Structure of OpenAPI.

Basic Structure