Design and Implementation of a Model-Driven Approach for Restful APIs

The development of REST APIs requires a great deal of time because developers have to address several issues to ensure a suitable design and the desired usability. This paper uses the model-driven approach to generate proper and functional REST APIs while focusing on the core aspects of REST and the consequences for the generation process. We present a method, which allows to design a REST API from an abstract point of view. This user-defined model allows to generate source code for a REST framework such as Jersey. The implemented framework includes the generation of specified resources, methods, and a persistence layer. This paper presents a REST metamodel and a user model, which enables the user to specify the desired API. After the initialization of the generation process, the framework provides a readyto-use REST API.