Craft Project Proposal

Objective

Build a cross platform tool where developers can organize and play around with REST, GraphQL, gRPC, and WebSocket APIs in a single place.

Background

There is currently no single tool allowing developers to test & organize REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSocket APIs together.

• Postman: REST / GraphQL
• Insomnia: REST / GraphQL
• GraphQL Playground: GraphQL
• Smart Websocket Client Chrome extension: WebSocket
• BloomRPC: gRPC

However, real world software systems often use more than one technology stack to achieve their specific performance & maintenance needs.

For smart hardware ecosystems, engineers frequently have to work with raw UDP, TCP, and Bluetooth protocols. Currently, they use Wireshark to analyze RAW network packets.

Architecture

Roadmap

v1

• Send simple REST request to any backend with custom header, method, and body (mininal UI)
• Send GraphQL request to any backend with custom query (mininal UI)
• Connect to any Web socket server. Send custom message and receive response from the server (mininal UI)
• Send gRPC (H2C/HTTPS) requests to any any backend (mininal UI)
• Save & group APIs into services (directories)
• Import REST apis from OpenAPI 3.0 spec
• Show GraphQL documentation after user filled in the base URL
• Import gRPC apis from .proto file
• Attach markdown document to the apis
• Export directory so that it can be version controlled
• Enable syntax highlighting for JSON payload
• Enable syntax highlighting for GraphQL query
• Enable syntax highlighting for gRPC request
• Redesign the UI so that it's clear, convenient, easy to use, and looks good

v2

• Support Google, Facebook, and Github sign in
• Save directories to backend
• Generate shareable for a directory or a API
• Create teams and add members
• Share directories with in the team
• Provide web hooks so that devs can do continuous delivery for their directory
• Share directories to public
• Search public directories

v3

• Mock HTTP API
• Mock GraphQL API
• Mock Web Socket API
• Mock gRPC API
• Companies maintain their public API directory
• Developers purchase quota package for paid APIs
• Send & receive raw UDP packets
• Send & receive raw TCP packets
• Send & receive bluetooth packets
• Export UDP & TCP APIs for version control
• Mock UDP API
• Mock TCP API
• Mock Bluetooth
• Pre Request Scripts (Need more research)
• Automated Testing - Ability to write test suites for API collections (Need more research)