Overview of RESTful API Description Languages: Difference between revisions

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Hypertext-driven APIs: Improved language use
Mikepyne (talk | contribs)
'free-form documentation' reads better than 'a free-form document'.
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{{Orphan|date=March 2015}}
 
'''''RESTful''''' (REpresentational State Transfer) '''''API''''' (Application Programming Interface) '''''DLs''''' (Description Languages) are [[formal language]]s designed to provide a structured description of a [[REST]]ful [[web API]] that is useful both to a human and for automated machine processing. API Description Languages are sometimes called [[interface description language]]s (IDLs). The structured description might be used to generate documentation for human [[programmer]]s; such documentation ismay be easier to read than a free-form documentdocumentation, since all documentation generated by the same tool follows the same formatting conventions. Additionally, the description language is usually precise enough to allow automated generation of various software artifacts, like libraries, to access the API from various programming languages, which takes the burden of manually creating them off the programmers.
 
==History==