EMF-REST: Generation of RESTful APIs from Models
Abstract
In the last years, RESTful Web services have become more and more popular as a lightweight solution to connect remote systems in distributed and Cloud-based architectures. However, being an architectural style rather than a specification or standard, the proper design of RESTful Web services is not trivial since developers have to deal with a plethora of recommendations and best practices. Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) emphasizes the use of models and model transformations to raise the level of abstraction and semi-automate the development of software. In this paper we present an approach that leverages on MDE techniques to generate RESTful services. The approach, called EMF-REST, takes EMF data models as input and generates Web APIs following the REST principles and relying on well-known libraries and standards, thus facilitating its comprehension and maintainability. Additionally, EMF-REST integrates model and Web-specific features to provide model validation and security capabilities, respectively, to the generated API. For Web developers, our approach brings more agility to the Web development process by providing ready-to-run-and-test Web APIs out of data models. Also, our approach provides MDE practitioners the basis to develop Cloud-based modeling solutions as well as enhanced collaborative support.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1504.03498,
title = {EMF-REST: Generation of RESTful APIs from Models},
author = {Hamza Ed-Douibi and Javier Luis Cánovas Izquierdo and Abel Gómez and Massimo Tisi and Jordi Cabot},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1504.03498},
year = {2024}
}