What is difference between API and OpenAPI?

What is API Blueprint?

If you want to have a single entry point for accessing your API, API Blueprint is the way to go.

API Blueprint provides a language-agnostic, machine-readable API description of your RESTful services. Its primary purpose is to document how to call your APIs.

What do you need in order to use API Blueprint? Java/Scala and an IDE like IntelliJ or Eclipse are a good start. You'll probably also want some server-side framework (like Play) which has an official integration with API Blueprint.

Why should you use API Blueprint? Documentation that can be easily understood by non-technical users is key in any software project, and APIs are no exception to this rule. API Blueprint allows you to create a well-structured documentation in a single place, that can be distributed to a non-technical audience (ie a product owner or an external contractor). How to make a good API description? API Blueprint makes it easy to generate your API documentation from an existing Java API or from a REST endpoint running on your server. Here are a few things you should consider when making an API description: Don't forget to cover the not found part: you will have to respond to HTTP requests where the resource does not exist. A simple 404 response may be good enough here.

Add a detailed description for each URI: don't leave out any detail about your endpoints, even if they are simple endpoints (like GET /user/123). A detailed description is the best documentation you can have for your API.

Use only meaningful parameters: think twice about what will your endpoints respond to. An endpoint that responds to a GET request to /user/123?firstName=Bob&lastName=Smith may be confusing for a user. Make sure your endpoints respond only to the actions you expect them to do.

A short description is not always the best, but remember that you can use the markdown syntax for a few extra details. How can I read my generated documentation with a single click? If you're using GitHub Pages and Google Chrome, you can use the free GitHub Markdown Viewer extension to view your documentation online. Is API Blueprint supported by your favorite web framework?

What is the difference between API Blueprint and OpenAPI?

Why use API Blueprint to describe APIs?

Why use OpenAPI to document APIs? Why would we use an API first approach versus a REST style approach? So you've decided that you need to create a new web API. Great, but you know nothing about the service you are creating and how to properly design an API interface in 2025. So what do you do? The question is really should you design an API first or follow a REST like approach. Answering these questions will help you determine if you should start with API Blueprint or OpenAPI.

Let's dive in and explore what is API Blueprint, why it is useful, and why you might consider using it. What is API Blueprint. API Blueprint is a method of describing API interfaces. It was created as an alternative to OpenAPI. In addition, it was also made to provide a different way to implement an API than OpenAPI. If you're already familiar with OpenAPI, then you'll see how API Blueprint is very similar.

When we look at both API Blueprint and OpenAPI, they serve a similar purpose. However, there are subtle differences between the two. Here's a closer look at API Blueprint and OpenAPI:

API Blueprint: API Blueprint is a declarative way to document and explain your API. Using this document, developers can quickly get up to speed with your API interface. As API Blueprint is declarative, developers only need to focus on the structure of the API. They don't need to worry about the implementation details of the HTTP requests and responses that are making up an API call.

OpenAPI: OpenAPI is a more structured version of API Blueprint. We often refer to it as JSON Schema. OpenAPI can be used when creating a Swagger description for your API. When creating OpenAPI specifications, the OpenAPI spec requires details about the endpoints. This includes, all resources and operations included in your API (resources and methods). When implementing these requirements, the implementation should match up with the structure of the API document.

The most important benefit of using API Blueprint is that we can generate it easily. This enables us to quickly generate an interface for our API. Our API specification is not just a collection of code. To support this, we must have a way of generating these specifications.

What is the difference between blueprint and Swagger?

We often get questions asking what's the difference between Swagger and blueprint.

We've done our best to answer them, but here's a quick summary: Swagger is an open-source API description tool that's built in a lot of newer technologies like Kubernetes (for orchestration) and microservices (aka not REST APIs).

The difference between Swagger and Blueprints? Swagger enables you to automate API creation using APIs like: Swagger; Spring Data with Jackson, JSON, and JAXB as data converters; Java 8 lambda expression; and Kubernetes (if it comes with your API platform of choice). When were creating and developing Swagger, the first thing that came to mind was a good tool to quickly describe the structure of an API, whether its REST or non-REST, and how it works for different consumers. But when we started thinking about the need of documenting APIs inside existing business logic layers, we began to realize that Blueprints come into play. So to help make these differences clearer, we decided to explain them in detail in a series of blog posts.

Our goal here is to show exactly how two similar tools like Swagger and Blueprint can have opposite results. For example, if you want to add a comment functionality to your APIs, then using Blueprint you can just drop comments on the API endpoints. In contrast, using Swagger you need to add the Comment Object to the responses, and define that object in an API definition file.

How to add a comment functionality to API. Blueprints can be applied to all REST endpoints to add a comment to a field inside an API. It requires adding the comment object in the request, and defining it in the response body.

Add a Comment endpoint: Blueprint. Let's take an existing example - this is how you would use Blueprint to add a comment endpoint to a REST API. You'll notice that nothing more than adding a new endpoint needs to happen.

First, you need to define a Blueprint object. The blueprint needs to specify the fields the comment data will have. We'll use a new object called Comment for the field types.

In our Blueprint definition, we also need to add a Comment endpoint in the Resources list, and define it in the response.