Restlet, a provider of API design tooling, has released a new version of its Restlet Studio that supports DevOps teams.
Restlet Studio is an API design tool that helps API developers move between development, test and deployment tools within the Restlet Platform. The Restlet Platform supports all major API specification languages such as OpenAPI, also known as Swagger, and the RESTful API Modeling Language (RAML) specification. The Restlet Platform provides an integrated set of tools and resources for API testing, discovery and consumption.
“Our new version of Restlet Studio reflects demand from businesses for an integrated platform for the design, testing, and delivery of APIs, a process that streamlines workflows of development, QA and production teams,” said Jerome Louvel, founder and “chief geek” at Restlet, in a statement. “Restlet is dedicated to providing the best API DevOps platform with the strongest ecosystem. We welcome cooperation from other vendors.”
Louvel said companies can use advanced API tools to facilitate collaboration within their DevOps teams when they publish data and applications in the cloud or deploy mobile and internet of things (IoT) applications.
New features in the latest version of Restlet Studio include a new search feature inside the tool, new keyboard shortcuts for Windows and Mac, and a redesigned navigation panel.
“We are seeing an exponential growth in the number and quality of APIs produced and consumed by developers working not only in large enterprises but also in small companies,” Louvel said. “This growth is fueled by the fact that most new software development relies on APIs, such as back ends, gateways and microservices.”
Louvel noted that the industry has entered into the era of API-driven software.
“DevOps has become a widespread practice for engineering teams to develop, qualify and operate software based on continuous integration and Agile methodology,” he said. “DevOps has a rich ecosystem of tools, such as GitHub for source code collaboration, Atlassian JIRA for issue tracking and Agile project management. Restlet is already working on direct integration with those tools. DevOps teams are starting to move beyond continuous integration of software towards more continuous delivery in production, and APIs are key enablers of these automations.”
The new version of Restlet Studio also provides support for nested data structures. This enables developers to design advanced API definitions that make APIs more scalable and simpler to organize and manage.
“I like the new look, coloring is always helpful especially if used in a consistent manner in both the UI and API definition,” said Mark Skiles, a software architect at Pioneer and early user of the new version of Restlet Studio.
The new release also enables developers to redesign large APIs or make major changes after a team review with a simple drag-and-drop format, Louvel said. Resources, representations and operations are easily organized with simple point and click actions, he said.
“We see a need for a new generation of API-driven tooling supporting each member of the DevOps team in activities such as designing, testing, deploying and monitoring the software,” Louvel said. “Those tools need to support the new workflows used to deliver API projects more efficiently, such as contract-driven, test-driven or behavior-driven ones. We have had customers use our software to achieve not only digital transformation, but also move to more continuous innovation.”
The Restlet Platform for APIs is used by more than 2 million developers.
Earlier this year, Restlet announced that its API test product DHC works with Jenkins. This is part of the company’s trend to improve API development tools to integrate into the DevOps workflow.
“Modern mobile apps, single-page web sites and applications are more and more relying on Web APIs as the nexus of the interaction between the frontend and the backend services,” said Guillaume Laforge, project lead for the Groovy programming language, in a blog post. “Web APIs are also central to third-party integration, when you want to share your services with others, or when you need to consume existing APIs to build your own solution on top of their shoulders.”