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Apiary vs RAML: What are the differences?
Introduction: In this Markdown document, we will examine the key differences between Apiary and RAML for API design purposes.
Input and Output Formats: Apiary primarily uses MSON format for defining models, while RAML uses YAML for both its input and output formats, providing a more seamless development experience.
Toolchain Integration: RAML offers extensive tool integration with API console, developer portal, and mock server, whereas Apiary offers a more streamlined integration with services like GitHub for version control and team collaboration.
Community Support: Apiary has a large and active community providing support and resources for users, while RAML, although widely adopted, may have a smaller community in comparison.
Prototyping Capabilities: Apiary excels in rapid API prototyping with its API Blueprint format, allowing for quick iterations and feedback, while RAML focuses on comprehensive API documentation and design specifications.
Schema Evolution: RAML supports advanced features for managing schema evolution, allowing for easier updating and versioning of APIs, whereas Apiary may require more manual intervention in this regard.
Learning Curve: Apiary is known for its user-friendly interface and simplicity, catering to users of all skill levels, whereas RAML may have a steeper learning curve due to its robust feature set and flexibility.
In Summary, the key differences between Apiary and RAML lie in their input/output formats, toolchain integration, community support, prototyping capabilities, schema evolution, and learning curve for users.
From a StackShare Community member: "I just started working for a start-up and we are in desperate need of better documentation for our API. Currently our API docs is in a README.md file. We are evaluating Postman and Swagger UI. Since there are many options and I was wondering what other StackSharers would recommend?"
I use Postman because of the ease of team-management, using workspaces and teams, runner, collections, environment variables, test-scripts (post execution), variable management (pre and post execution), folders (inside collections, for better management of APIs), newman, easy-ci-integration (and probably a few more things that I am not able to recall right now).
I use Swagger UI because it's an easy tool for end-consumers to visualize and test our APIs. It focuses on that ! And it's directly embedded and delivered with the APIs. Postman's built-in tools aren't bad, but their main focus isn't the documentation and also, they are hosted outside the project.
I recommend Postman because it's easy to use with history option. Also, it has very great features like runner, collections, test scripts runners, defining environment variables and simple exporting and importing data.
Pros of Apiary
- Easy to use29
- Free to use19
- Traffic inspector12
- Free11
- Collaboration10
- Mock API7
- Dashboard4
- Customization3
- 30 Days Trial2
- Access Control2
- Documentation2
- Validate API Documentation2
- API explorer1
- Clean syntax1
- Provisioning1
- Shared API blueprint templates1
- Github integration helps with collaboration1
- Code auto-generation1
Pros of RAML
- API Specification15
- Human Readable7
- API Documentation6
- Design Patterns & Code Reuse3
- API Modeling2
- Automatic Generation of Mule flow2
- Unit Testing2
- API Mocking1
- SDK Generation1