APIS Discovery Service

• US 20120296929A1
• Filed: 05/18/2011
• Published: 11/22/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 05/18/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Hossain, Monsur, Gregorio, Joseph Charles, Lopyrev, Anton
• Granted Patent: US 8,577,914 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/769
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

The APIs Discovery Service is a service that exposes machine readable metadata about APIs, enabling users to build client libraries, IDE plugins, and other tools that interact with these APIs.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for managing access to metadata related to application programming interfaces (APIs), the method comprising:

receiving, by a server, a request for metadata related to a supported API from an API client;

searching an API directory data repository, by the server, to find the directory entry corresponding with the supported API; and

retrieving, by the server, a discovery document from a directory data repository based on information from the directory entry, that contains machine-readable metadata related to the supported API.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the directory entry and discovery document are transferred in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the directory entry includes a link to the discovery document that is used to find the discovery document.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the directory and the discovery document are each accessed using calls that use HTTPS.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the discovery document comprises a list of API-specific properties.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the discovery document comprises authentication information for the API.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the discovery document comprises information about the resources provided by the API.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the discovery document comprises information about the methods provided by the API.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, wherein the information about the methods is stored in key-value format.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

building a custom client library based on the discovery document.

11. A system for managing access to metadata related to APIs, the system comprising:

one or more processors, configured to receive a request for metadata at a server related to a supported API from an API client;

a directory data repository, configured to store directory entries and discovery documents;

a directory data searching unit, configured to search the directory data repository to find the directory entry corresponding with the supported API; and

a discovery document retrieval unit, configured to retrieve a discovery document from the directory data repository, based on information from the directory entry, that contains machine-readable metadata related to the supported API.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the directory entry and discovery document are transferred in JSON format.

13. The system of claim 11, wherein the directory entry includes a link to the discovery document that is used to find the discovery document.

14. The system of claim 11, wherein the directory and the discovery document are each accessed using calls that use HTTPS.

15. The system of claim 11, wherein the discovery document comprises a list of API-specific properties.

16. The system of claim 11, wherein the discovery document comprises authentication information for the API.

17. The system of claim 11, wherein the discovery document comprises information about the resources provided by the API.

18. The system of claim 11, wherein the discovery document comprises information about the methods provided by the API.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the information about the methods is stored in key-value format.

20. The system of claim 11, further comprising:

a client library building unit configured to build a custom client library based on the discovery document.

21. A computer readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the processors to execute a method for managing access to metadata related to APIs, the method comprising:

receiving, by the one or more processors, a request for metadata related to a supported API from an API client;

searching an API directory data repository, by the one or more processors, to find the directory entry corresponding with the supported API; and

retrieving, by the one or more processors, a discovery document from the directory data repository based on information from the directory entry, that contains machine-readable metadata related to the supported API.