Skip to content

Common API Types

Whilst the spec.type of a API may be any string, visualisation is only available for a small subset. Further to this, understanding is made easier by sticking to a small set of well-known and common values. Thus we recommend that when specifying an API one of the following is used in this field:

  • openapi - an API definition in YAML or JSON format based on the OpenAPI version 2 or version 3 spec
  • asyncapi - an API definition based on the AsyncAPI spec
  • graphql - an API definition based on GraphQL schemas for consuming GraphQL based APIs
  • grpc - an API definition based on Protocol Buffers to use with gRPC

These are selected such that they overlap with the common API types described in the backstage documentation, but should be added to and ammended to reflect usage.