MockAPI: an agile approach supporting API-first web application development

Abstract

In the last years, agile development methodologies have been widely adopted. However, they still lack support for API requirements while, at the same time, public RESTful APIs are fueling a rapid growth of web applications providing services built on other services. On the other hand, whereas Model-Driven Development techniques successfully increase the productivity in the development of data-intensive web applications, they lack the agility required when developing heterogeneous web applications with frequent requirement changes. In this paper we introduce MockAPI, an approach based on annotating user interface mockups that combines the advantages of agile approaches and Model-Driven Development. We introduce a metamodel for annotations and demonstrate how to derive running API prototypes as starting point for agile development. RESTful API best practices and API-first development are introduced into the agile process. The MockAPI approach defines a set of constraints to accelerate the development of web applications. We also show the results of a brief validation applying MockAPI to popular web sites.