| Internet-Draft | api-catalog | June 2023 |
| Smith | Expires 4 December 2023 | [Page] |
This document defines the "api-catalog" well-known URI. It is intended to facilitate discovery of the APIs published by a Web host.¶
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A Web host may publish Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to encourage requests for interaction from external parties. Such APIs must be discovered before they may be used - i.e., the external party needs to know what APIs a given Web host exposes, including their purpose, any constraints to use, and the endpoints to interact with the APIs. To faciliate discovery of this information, this document proposes a well-known URI, 'api-catalog', as a location where a Web host's API endpoints are listed and described.¶
The primary goal is to facilitate the discovery of both a Web Host's public API endpoints, and metadata that informs the potential API client of the purpose of each API and any constraints around usage.¶
Non-goals: this document does not mandate paths for API endpoints. i.e., it does not mandate that my_example_api should be available at example.com/.well-known/api-catalog/my_example_api (although it is not forbidden to do so).¶
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶
The api-catalog well-known URI is intended for HTTP(S) servers that publish APIs and wish to facilitate their discovery. Since the purpose of the api-catalog well-known URI is to facilitate API discovery with minimal prior knowledge, it is recommended that /.well-known/api-catalog be hosted at a predictable hostname, i.e. www.example.com . It may also be hosted at other hostnames, e.g. api.example.com, developer.example.com etc.¶
A Web host (example.com) supporting this URI:¶
A request to the api-catalog well-known URI SHALL return a linkset [RFC9264] containing an array of links with the link relation "api-bookmarks" and an anchor representing the entity hosting the APIs. Following each link SHOULD return a machine-readable description of the API with sufficient information to decide if, and understand how, to use the API. (Editor's note: we can recommend the format for this machine-readble description, e.g. https://restdesc.org/)¶
Example request:¶
GET .well-know/api-catalog HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Accept: application/linkset+json
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:01 GMT
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
Content-Type: application/linkset+json
{
"linkset": [{
"anchor": https://example.com/,
"api-bookmarks": [{
"href": https://developer.example.com/apis/foo_api
}, {
"href": https://developer.example.com/apis/bar_api
}, {
"href": https://developer.example.com/apis/cantona_api
}
]
}]
}
"api-catalog" . A list of one or more machine-readable API bookmarks published by the Web host.¶
"api-bookmarks" . A collection of API bookmarks. Each bookmatk may be followed to obtain a machine-readable description of each API. (Editor's note: not sure if it's better to have an array of links under "api-bookmarks", or an array of links each with their own anchor, and individual link relation of "api-bookmark")¶
The requirements in section 3 of [RFC8615] for defining Well-Known Uniform Resource Identifiers are met as follows:¶
The api-catalog URI SHALL be appended to the /.well-known/ path-prefix for "well-known locations".¶
The api-catalog well-known URI may be used with the HTTP and HTTPS URI schemes.¶
This specification registers the "api-catalog" well-known URI in the Well-Known URI Registry as defined by [RFC6415] .¶
URI suffix: api-catalog¶
Specification document(s): draft-smith-api-catalog-02¶
Related information: The "api-catalog" documents obtained from the same host using the HTTP and HTTPS protocols (using default ports) MUST be identical.¶
This specification registers the "api-catalog" link relation by following the procedures per section 4.2.2 of [RFC8288] (Editor's note: this is TODO).¶
This specification registers the "api-bookmarks" link relation by following the procedures per section 4.2.2 of [RFC8288] (Editor's note: this is TODO).¶
TODO¶