What are the advantages and disadvantages of using JSON and XML schemas for your API documentation?

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If you are developing a web application that uses an API to communicate with other services or clients, you need to document your API clearly and consistently. One way to do that is to use a schema language, such as JSON Schema or XML Schema, to define the structure and validation rules of your data. But what are the advantages and disadvantages of using JSON and XML schemas for your API documentation? In this article, we will compare and contrast these two popular formats and help you decide which one suits your needs better.

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1 JSON Schema

JSON Schema is a standard for describing and validating JSON data, which is commonly used for exchanging data on the web. This standard allows you to specify the properties, types, formats, and constraints of your data, as well as provide human-readable descriptions and examples. It's easy to read and write, supports complex and nested data, and has many tools and libraries for generating and validating schemas. There are several advantages to using JSON Schema for API documentation, such as compatibility with JSON, lightweight flexibility with custom keywords, and the ability to define complex data structures. However, there are also some drawbacks to using this standard, such as the lack of standardization across versions and implementations, lack of strictness in validation, and lack of interoperability with other formats or systems.

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Yadong Liu

Engineering Leader
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I would disagree with the characterization of the lack of standardization today. There has been a standard specification that most industry practitioners are moving to adopt, i.e. OpenAPI.

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2 XML Schema

XML Schema is a standard for defining and validating XML data, another common format for exchanging data on the web. This specification follows the XML specification and has a well-defined grammar and semantics, allowing you to specify elements, attributes, types, namespaces, restrictions, annotations and documentation. XML Schema is compatible with XML, which is widely used and supported by many languages and frameworks. It is also strict and robust, ensuring that your data conforms to the schema and preventing errors and inconsistencies. Moreover, it is interoperable and extensible, allowing you to reuse and integrate existing schemas from different domains. However, XML Schema is verbose and complex to write and read compared to JSON Schema. It is also rigid and inflexible, limiting your options for defining data and logic. Additionally, it is less popular than JSON or other formats that are more suitable for web applications.

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David Thigpen

Owner at Thigpen Consulting
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It is fairly widely used in the field of banking with MISMO for mortgages and EDI XML for transactions to name a few. It is also used to define objects that are later used in code with things like JAXB and XSD2Code. Also, with the CodeDOM, all of your code in .net is in xml. So, schemas are very widely used. Additionally, a lot of the dashboards that you see online are XSLT transforms of xml data passed to the frontend.

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3 How to choose

When deciding between JSON and XML schemas for API documentation, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Factors such as the complexity of data and logic, user preferences and expectations, compatibility of tools and libraries for creating and validating schemas, and performance of the application and network should be taken into account. Generally, JSON Schema is preferable if simplicity, flexibility, and compatibility with JSON are valued, while XML Schema may be better if rigor, robustness, and interoperability with XML are desired. Ultimately, it’s important to consider the specific use case and requirements before making a decision, testing and comparing different options if necessary.

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4 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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Kurt Cagle

Editor In Chief @ The Cagle Report | AI, Data Modeling
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Increasingly, I would argue that SHACL, as part of RDF, is beginning to emerge as an excellent middle-ground schema language. SHACL (the Shape Constraint Language) can be expressed in Turtle, but it can also be easily written in JSON-LD and XML Schema (XSD) as it provides ways of describing generalized Shapes, which can be thought of as schema patterns. SHACL is used to generate Typescript for GraphQL, and shacl validators exist within Python, Javascript, Java and .NET environments.

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? Max C.

Engineering Manager, FP / distributed systems
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Consider using API modeling language from Amazon called Smithy (they call it IDL - interface definition language). I would describe it as something closer to Protocol Buffers than designing an API structure by hand in JSON. Advantages: - high level / easy to read and write - designed with code gen tools in mind. the intended usage is to have your client and server code generated from the Smithy definition. more here: https://smithy.io/2.0/implementations.html#client-code-generators

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What are the advantages and disadvantages of using JSON and XML schemas for your API documentation?

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1 JSON Schema

2 XML Schema

3 How to choose

4 Here’s what else to consider

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What are the advantages and disadvantages of using JSON and XML schemas for your API documentation?

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1 JSON Schema

2 XML Schema

3 How to choose

4 Here’s what else to consider

Web Applications

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