API Explorer

API Explorer is a tool that reads a specification and creates a console where developers can test their own web services.

Features

• Loads API specification from a file or a string
• Multiple HTTP methods supported: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE
• Syntax highlighting for Json, XML and HTTP responses.
• History of requests/responses
• Specify HTTP headers
• Specify Request parameters
• Show description of the web service, which can be used as a documentation of the web services.
• Supports HTTP basic authentication and HMAC-SHA1 hash authentication.
• Parameters in the form of: user[name] or company[owner][name] are automatically converted into hash parameters.

Precondition

Given that it makes a request to the same server, it requires a multi-threaded server. On this example we will use 'thin' and 'unicorn'.

Configure thin server on threaded mode

Add thin to the Gemfile.

gem 'thin', '~> 1.6.1'

Set thread safe mode in development.rb (or the right environment)

config.thread_safe!

Bundle install

bundle install

Test the server by running it with:

thin start --threaded

Alternative - Configure unicorn server

Add unicorn to the Gemfile.

gem "unicorn", "~> 4.7.0"

Add the file 'unicorn.conf' to config/ with the following content:

worker_processes 3

Bundle install

bundle install

Test the server by running it with:

unicorn_rails -c config/unicorn.conf

Install the gem

Add the gem to the Gemfile.

gem 'api_explorer'

Create a file named ws_specification.json (or any name you desire) and place it on /lib. An example can be:

{ 
	"methods": [ 
		{ 
			"name": "Users index", 
			"url": "v1/users", 
			"description": "The index of users", 
			"method": "GET", 
			"parameters": [{"name": "API_TOKEN"}] 
		}, 
		{ 
			"name": "User login", 
			"url": "v1/users/login", 
			"description": "Users login", 
			"method": "POST", 
			"parameters": [{"name": "API_TOKEN"}, {"name": "email"}, {"name": "password"}] 
		} 
 	] 
}

Create an initializer in /config/initializers/api_explorer.rb with the following content:

ApiExplorer::use_file = true 
ApiExplorer::json_path = 'lib/ws_specification.json'

Another option can be:

ApiExplorer::use_file = false   
ApiExplorer::json_string = { ... - Web services specification - ....}

And install all dependencies:

bundle install

And finally mount the engine on config/routes.rb

mount ApiExplorer::Engine => '/api_explorer'

That's it. Its ready to go.

Run

Start thin (or unicorn)

thin start --threaded

or

unicorn_rails -c config/unicorn.conf

And go to

http://<base_path>/api_explorer 

Contribute

• Fork project
• Add features
• Send pull request

Next improvements

• Better error handling
• Test with Rails 4
• More authentication methods
• Support absolute URLs to test 3rd party APIs.

License

See LICENSE file for details

Author

Developed at TopTier labs