APIS discovery service

• US 8,577,914 B2
• Filed: 05/18/2011
• Issued: 11/05/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 05/18/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Hossain, Monsur, Lopyrev, Anton, Gregorio, Joseph, Stahl, Mark Edward
• Primary Examiner(s): VU, BAI DUC
• Application Number:
  US13/110,866
• Publication Number:
  US 20120296929A1
• Time in Patent Office: 902 Days
• Field of Search: None
• 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 one or more APIs from an API client;

searching, by the server, an API directory based on the request, the API directory having a plurality of APIs each of which have a respective directory entry and a respective discovery document, to find a directory entry corresponding with the request, the directory entry having a link to a location of a discovery document;

parsing the directory entry to obtain the link to the location of the discovery document; and

retrieving, by the server, the discovery document from the API directory based on the link in the directory entry, that contains machine-readable metadata related to one or more functions of the one or more APIs.

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 and the discovery document are each accessed using HTTPS.

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

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

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

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

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein the information about the methods is stored in key-value format.

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

building a custom client library based on the discovery document.

10. A system for managing access to metadata related to application programming interfaces (APIs), the system comprising:

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

a directory data repository, configured to store directory entries and discovery documents corresponding to a plurality of APIs;

a directory data searching unit, configured to search the directory data repository based on the request to find a directory entry corresponding with the request, the directory entry having a link to a location of a discovery document; and

a discovery document retrieval unit, configured to;

parse the directory entry to obtain the link to the location of the discovery document;

retrieve the discovery document from the directory data repository, based on the link in the directory entry, that contains machine-readable metadata related to one or more functions of the one or more API.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the directory entry and discovery document are transferred in JSON format.

12. The system of claim 10, wherein the directory and the discovery document are each accessed using HTTPS.

13. The system of claim 10, wherein the discovery document comprises a list of API-specific properties.

14. The system of claim 10, wherein the discovery document comprises authentication information for the API.

15. The system of claim 10, wherein the discovery document comprises information about the resources provided by the API.

16. The system of claim 10, wherein the discovery document comprises information about the methods provided by the API.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the information about the methods is stored in key-value format.

18. The system of claim 10, further comprising:

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

19. 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 application programming interfaces (APIs), the method comprising:

receiving, by a server, a request for metadata related to one or more APIs from an API client;

searching, by the server, an API directory based on the request, the API directory having a plurality of APIs each of which have a respective directory entry and a respective discovery document, to find a directory entry corresponding with the request, the directory entry having a link to a location of a discovery document;

parsing the directory entry to obtain the link to the location of the discovery document; and

retrieving, by the server, the discovery document from the API directory based on the link in the directory entry, that contains machine-readable metadata related to one or more functions of the one or more APIs.