As the number of available API definitions out there grows, I am increasingly coming across variations of APIs that I already have included in my API Stack. It can be tedious to try and sync these with existing copies, so I wanted to take a look and see if there was anything already available out there that would help provide a diff for either OpenAPI Spec, RAML, or API Blueprint.

The most common one I found referenced was a Ruby one for OpenAPI Spec from Civis Analytics. Next, I found a pretty interesting web tool, which provides its Node.js source code on GitHub, including a CLI edition. After these two solutions, I only found one more for RAML, but couldn't find anything for API Blueprint.

I wanted to think beyond just the common API definition formats and look for diff tools that would work just for JSON. I found Diff, which was pretty interesting, as well as DiffSync which provided a real-time diff for JSON. I haven't tried any of them out, I am just trying to compile a list of what is out there before I dive into what their capabilities are.

I have a master database of API definitions where I can just import API definitions that I find, and it will add any new paths, parameters, and schemas it comes across. I would much rather have the ability to just run each version through a diff tool and be able to select which elements I want to have merged. For now, I will just implement a custom layer to my API monitoring system, but I would like to see API diff move forward similar to we saw the conversation evolve with the introduction of API Transformer.