SmartBear expands API design, enabling developers to work in Java IDE IntelliJ IDEA.

SmartBear has expanded its API design by enabling developers to work in the popular Java IDE IntelliJ IDEA.

The software development company, SmartBear, has released a new plug-in for its SwaggerHub API designed to support IntelliJ IDEA, a popular Java-based IDE. API developers familiar with IntelliJ IDEA now have ready access to the SwaggerHub API design platform to create, organise, and document APIs.

The IntelliJ IDEA plug-in expands on the list of options for API designers offered with SwaggerHub, including the Microsoft VS Code extension, the SwaggerHub Code Editor, SwaggerHub Visual Editor, and SwaggerHub CLI Tool.

"Our goal is to meet API developers where they work with familiar tools to make them more productive across the entire API development lifecycle," says SmartBear senior vice president, Brian Downey.

"With IntelliJ IDEA, we have added support for an IDE which extends popularity to more than 4 million Java developers.

IntelliJ IDEA is an IDE written in Java and developed by JetBrains, it's designed for developers largely focused on server-side development. It includes several features to optimise developer productivity, including intelligent coding assistance and ergonomic design. While IntelliJ IDEA is an IDE for Java, it also supports a large variety of other languages such as SQL, JPQL, HTML, and JavaScript, and others.

"In many ways, we share a common vision with SmartBear to make it easy for developers to take care of quality during all the stages of development," says JetBrains Americas vice president of sales and partnerships, Brian Noll.

"We recognise the value SwaggerHub delivers for enabling developer collaboration and API standardisation and welcome their participation in our IntelliJ marketplace."
 
Downey says the IntelliJ IDEA already embeds OpenAPI capabilities for developers who want to consume APIs into their applications. He says SwaggerHub's plug-in for IntelliJ IDEA targets API providers who are designing APIs and want to enable their developers with a collaboration platform to reinforce design consistency and quality.

The new IntelliJ plug-in enables API designers to view and edit their APIs and Domains directly from within the development environment. Key features include:

• View and Navigate definitions from your SwaggerHub Organisations
• Edit and Save API definitions via IntelliJ IDEA to SwaggerHub
• Create new APIs or Domains from scratch or using a template
• Delete API definitions by version or the entire definition
• Create new versions of your API definitions and set defaults
• Auto mocking for quick API definition testing
• The ability to validate APIs against the OpenAPI/Swagger specification
• Making API version public/private to change visibility