A Web API Ecosystem through Feature-Based Reuse

The fast-growing web API landscape brings clients more options than ever before-in theory. In practice, they cannot easily switch between different providers offering similar functionality. We discuss a vision for developing web APIs based on reuse of interface parts called features. Through the introduction of five design principles, we investigate the impact of feature-based reuse on web APIs. Applying these principles enables a granular reuse of client and server code, documentation, and tools. Together, they can foster a measurable ecosystem with cross-API compatibility, opening the door to a more flexible generation of web clients.