Elevating Developer Experiences with AI-Powered API Testing & Documentation
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The document outlines a survey regarding the current state of API development and testing, revealing that investment in APIs is increasing and quality is prioritized over speed and cost. It discusses the challenges in API testing and documentation, highlighting the need for tools like Postbot to assist developers in streamlining these processes. Key insights include the significance of API-first companies, management difficulties with microservices, and the growing use of generative AI in development workflows.
Elevating Developer Experiences with AI-Powered API Testing & Documentation
- 1. All rights reserved by Postman Inc AI-Powered API Testing & Documentation Jamie White Strategic Solutions Architect
- 2. More than 40,000 developers, testers and API professionals responded. THE WORLD’S LARGEST SURVEY ON APIS
- 3. 43% of respondents identified as Full Stack or Backend Developer. Only 8% identified as QA. FULLSTACK AND BACKEND DEVELOPERS
- 4. 92% expect investment in APIs to remain at least the same or increase over the next 12 months. KEY INSIGHT #1 - INVESTMENT IN APIS IS GROWING
- 5. 78% of leaders prioritised quality of solutions. KEY INSIGHT #2 - QUALITY IS KING 64% prioritised speed of delivery. 33% prioritised cost reduction.
- 6. Prioritises APIs at the beginning of the software development process. APIs then become the building blocks for other products and services. WHAT IS API-FIRST?
- 7. 75% agreed that API-first companies are more productive, create better software, and integrate faster with partners. KEY INSIGHT #3 - TREND TOWARDS API-FIRST
- 8. 76% of API leaders view their APIs as Products. Three quarters of API leaders have API Products that generate revenue. KEY INSIGHT #4 - APIS AS A PRODUCT
- 9. API first leaders were 2x as likely to be managing too many APIs and microservices. KEY INSIGHT #5 - MICROSERVICES ARE HARD
- 10. When developers leave, outdated documentation is the biggest gap. KEY INSIGHT #6 - OUTDATED DOCUMENTATION
- 11. 60% of respondents are using generative AI in their work. KEY INSIGHT #8 - GENERATIVE AI
- 12. ● Investment in APIs continues to grow. ● Quality of solutions is the most important attribute. ● API First companies have more frequent deployments with fewer issues. ● Microservices are hard to manage. ● Documentation is the biggest gap. ● Generative AI is being used, and is a desire for developers. SUMMARY
- 13. All rights reserved by Postman Inc AI-Powered API Testing & Documentation
- 14. API Producer & Consumer Lifecycles Producer Lifecycle Consumer Lifecycle
- 15. API Testing
- 16. API Testing - Challenges ● Writing tests is often manual and requires coding expertise ○ Tests are frequently coded by hand, or scaffolded without context or incorrectly ○ Certain technical skill set is needed ○ Time, time, time ● Testing is rushed and/or causes delayed shipments ○ Major time crunch at the end of release cycles to complete testing ○ Lack of test coverage increases chances of releasing with bugs
- 17. API Testing - Consequences ● Increased technical debt ● More bugs sneak through ● Less secure APIs ● Quality assurance degradation
- 19. Documentation - Challenges ● Documentation is missing or incomplete ○ Consumers struggle to understand poorly documented APIs ○ Rely on domain knowledge of key individuals ● Writing documentation consumes valuable time ○ Developers need to take attention away from writing code ○ Updates are manual, delayed, and inconsistent ○ Documentation is not static, always evolving based on the code
- 20. Documentation - Consequences ● Consumers experience difficulty using unfamiliar APIs ○ Integration, reusability, and monetization suffer when APIs are not well documented ● Time to productivity for new developers is slow ○ Issues in requests are causing frequent error responses from APIs ○ New joiners experience a learning curve to use a new toolset
- 22. Time consuming Never ending task Incredibly important Impactful outcomes Not everyone’s cup of tea INITIAL CONCLUSIONS
- 23. What do we do?
- 25. Postbot is your AI Assistant “As our technologies have improved, so have our abilities.”
- 26. Postbot’s goal is to increase developer productivity by assisting developers with API testing and documentation, and helping debug requests.
- 27. API Testing - Solutions ● Streamline test development with Postbot auto-complete ○ Describe tests in natural language ○ Save time writing test scripts, have Postbot do it for you ○ Allow less technical users to contribute to building test suites ● Low code approach to scaffold tests ○ Single click to generate initial tests for each request in a collection ○ Skip debugging tests, prompt Postbot to fix them for you
- 28. Documentation - Solutions ● Increase developer productivity ○ Focus more time on making APIs, less time on documenting them ○ Rely less on developer expertise, more on comprehensive documentation ○ Retain knowledge when key players leave ● Increase API Consumption ○ Reduce time to first API call and increase the rate of success consumers experience when calling your APIs ○ Auto-generate visualizations to make API responses more approachable to non technical audiences ● API Lifecycle Management ○ Documentation and testing are essential throughout the API lifecycle, from design and development to deployment and maintenance. Comprehensive documentation and thorough testing facilitate versioning, deprecation, and retirement of APIs, ensuring smooth transitions and minimal disruption for API consumers.
- 29. Let’s try a live demo….
- 30. I am loving the Postbot feature to generate tests. You have reduced my work by 60%. AI generated 105 lines worth of assertions in seconds. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Anonymous Feedback form submission “
- 31. All rights reserved by Postman Inc Q & A Thank You