From OpenAPI Spec Google Spreadsheet to GitHub Jekyll-Hosted YAML

I have been playing around with different ways of using Google Spreadsheet to drive YAML and JSON data to Jekyll data projects hosted as Github repositories. It is an approach I started playing around with in Washington DC, while I was helping data stewards publish government services as JSON-LD. It is something I've been playing around with lately to drive D3.js visualizations and even a comic book. 

There are a couple of things going on here. First, you are managing machine-readable data using Google Spreadsheets and publishing this data as two separate machine readable formats: JSON and YAML. When these formats are combined with the data capabilities of a Jekyll website hosted on GitHub Pages, it opens up some pretty interesting possibilities for using data to fuel some pretty fun things. Plus, there's no back-end needed.

To push this approach forward, I wanted to apply to managing OpenAPI Specs that can be used across the API life cycle. I pulled together a spreadsheet template for managing the details I need for an OpenAPI Spec. Then, I created a GitHub repository, forked my previous spreadsheet to YAML project, and modified it to pull data from a couple of worksheets in the Google Doc and publish as both JSON and YAML OpenAPI Spec. 

My OpenAPI Spec Google Sheet to YAML for use in a Jekyll project hosted on GitHub is just a prototype. The results don't always validate and I'm playing with different ways to represent and manage the data in the Google Sheet. It is a fun start, though! I am going to keep working on it and probably start a similar project for managing an APIs.json index using Google Sheets. When done right, it might provide another way that non-developers can participate in the API design process and apply OpenAPI Specs to other stops along the API lifecycle like with API documentation, SDK generation, or testing and monitoring.