Redesign of API-Documentation (based on public OpenAPI specification)

Hey everybody,

Soon, we will release our revised API documentation :tada:, which will make it much easier for you to get started and use with the API. The domain will remain https://api.seatable.io, but the new documentation will bring many new features and comfort improvements.

For example, in the future, you will be able to compose your API calls directly in your web browser and test them directly. Wondering how that will feel? Here is a short video about it:

use-readme-com

Why this redesign?

The extensive API is one of SeaTable’s greatest strengths. We at SeaTable also use SeaTable’s API in many places, such as for https://ideas.seatable.io or the template area on our homepage.

However, a good API also requires comprehensible and regularly updated documentation, and this is where we are increasingly reaching our limits with the current Postman solution. Postman is a fantastic tool to test single API commands, but the documentation created by Postman doesn’t offer live execution and also the administration is getting more and more complex because you can’t reuse elements.

That’s why we started looking for a better solution and found it at readme.com, which is not based on a proprietary format like Postman, but uses the widely used API standard OpenAPI. This is important because this alone brings some advantages.

What advantages will the redesign bring?

  • the new documentation not only creates the API calls you want, you can also try them out directly in the browser. You get direct feedback.
  • Your inputs will be validated immediately as you enter them. If the input is expected to be a number, but you enter a string, the documentation will tell you.
  • The description and explanation of the input variables will be much more comprehensive and better.
  • We will publish the OpenAPI specification on GitHub.

When will the new documentation be available?

We are working hard on the revision and want to have the documentation converted by the end of March. At the same time, however, there is so much to do that many changes and improvements will still be incorporated into the documentation in April. So you have to bring a little patience with you.

And if I want to continue using Postman?

That’s no problem. Postman allows the import of an OpenAPI specification, and so it will be possible to test single API requests with Postman in the future without any difficulties.

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Thank you for the positive feedback we have received so far for the API documentation change. We will continue to work on providing understandable and good documentation of the extensive SeaTable API at https://api.seatable.io.

Now to the news:
Since we know that Postman is a popular tool for testing APIs, the SeaTable API is also available as a Public Workspace and Collection on Postman starting today. The link is https://postman.com/seatable and the Collection can be easily forked.

In the following days, we will also publish the OpenAPI specification on GitHub.

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