Top API Specification Trends: 2019-2022

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in the adoption of APIs, resulting in a rise in API specification documents. The design-first approach for building APIs has become more prevalent, leading to intriguing trends in API specifications. Postman Collections are the most popular input format, used by nearly 30,000 users over the past three years. OpenAPI v3.0 imports have surpassed v2.0 imports, but OpenAPI v2.0 exports remain high due to tool support and stability issues with newer versions. RAML is losing popularity, while API Blueprint is no longer actively maintained. WADL is best suited for XML APIs, but its usage is decreasing due to the rise of JSON-based formats. The top use-cases for API specification transformations include converting Postman Collections to OpenAPI, downgrading from OpenAPI v3.0 to v2.0, and migrating SOAP APIs to REST. Invalid API specifications are common, with unresolvable references, syntax issues, and mismatched component types being the most frequent causes. The API community is converging towards accepting OpenAPI as the standard for describing REST API services, while new technologies like GraphQL and gRPC emerge.

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