API Blueprint

API Design for Humans

A powerful high-level API design language for web APIs.

API Blueprint is simple and accessible to everybody involved in the API design lifecycle. Its syntax is concise yet expressive.

With API Blueprint you can quickly prototype and model APIs to be created or describe already deployed mission-critical APIs. From a car to the largest Content Distribution Network (CDN) in the world.

The API Blueprint is built to encourage dialogue and collaboration between project stakeholders, developers and customers at any point in the API lifecycle. At the same time, the API Blueprint tools provide the support to achieve the goals be it API development, governance or delivery.

Open Source

API Blueprint is completely open sourced under the MIT license. Any contribution is highly appreciated.

At home on GitHub

API Blueprint language is recognized by GitHub. You can search for API Blueprint or use the apib language identifier for syntax highlighting.

Getting started

All it takes to describe an endpoint of your API is to write:

# GET /message
+ Response 200 (text/plain)

        Hello World!

in your favorite plain text editor.

With this blueprint you can already get a mock, documentation and test for your API before you even start coding.

To learn more about the API Blueprint syntax jump directly to the API Blueprint Tutorial or take a look at some examples.

Media Type

The media type for API Blueprint is text/vnd.apiblueprint.

Learn more

• Tutorial
• Advanced Tutorial
• Examples
• Wiki
• Glossary of Terms
• Specification
• List of Tools
• Developers

Future

The plans for API Blueprint are completely tracked on GitHub – see the API Blueprint Roadmap.

Developers

Building tools for API Blueprint is possible thanks to its machine-friendly face provided by API Blueprint parser.

If you are interested in building tools for API Blueprint check out the Developing tools for API Blueprint.

Contribute

Feel free report problems or propose new ideas using the API Blueprint GitHub issues.

We use an RFC process for proposing any substantial changes to the API Blueprint language, specification and/or parsers.

If you would like to propose a change, please consult our RFC process.

Get in Touch

• @apiblueprint
• Slack
• Stack Overflow
• GitHub Issues

License

MIT License. See the LICENSE file.