Mashape adopting HAR format for API tooling

[Ahmad Nassri]

Hey guys,

we (at Mashape) have adopted HAR in all our tooling, products and upcoming services, I wanted to engage this group to help advise and share your knowledge on the usage of the format beyond the web page performance realm.

• HAR Validator (https://www.npmjs.com/package/har-validator)
• I wasn't satisfied with the performance of Node.js HAR validators so I build one using the fastest JSON validation tool
  
  
• HTTP Snippet (https://www.npmjs.com/package/httpsnippet)
• HTTP Request snippet generator for many programming languages.
  
• uses HAR as the source format 
  
  
• APIembed: (https://apiembed.com/)
• Auto-generated code snippets in many programming languages for your website, blog or API documentation. Made with ♥ at Mashape
  
• uses HTTP Snippet to generate the embeddable html widget
  
  
• MockBin: (http://apianalytics.com/)
  
• Mock, Test & Track HTTP calls
  
• uses HAR to describe mock responses in buckets
  
• uses HAR to provide history and debug endpoints
  
  
• API Log Format: (https://github.com/Mashape/api-log-format)
  
• a derived format we're naming "ALF", essentially is 98% equivalent to HAR, minus a few objects that do not make sense for API logging ...
  
  
• API Analytics: (http://apianalytics.com/)
• a brand new product offering (currently in private beta, email me 1:1 if you'd like an invite): uses agents / proxy tools to monitor and report on the HTTP layer using ALF
  
  
• API Description Format: (TBD)
  
• a derived format uses HAR as base to describe, API endpoints, possible/optional request parameters / headers / etc.. with a representation of the possible bodies
  
• this is not published yet, but an idea I've been working on, I wanted to engage the community here first.
  
  
• More to come ...

I wanted to get the group's feedback and insight, as well as engage in conversation to participate in expanding on the HAR format!

here are some questions to get this conversation going:

- what are your thoughts on HAR being used outside the web performance realm?

- how do you feel about derived formats, adding / expanding on the original to satisfy some additional needs (reporting, documentation, etc ..)

- what's next for HAR, any thoughts on 1.3? what's missing? what's working? what's not?

- what's next for this group? would a bit more formal organizing help bring value here?

cheers.