Software Catalog

Add API visualizations in Port with swagger UI, embedded URL and markdown information

November 29, 2022

Dudi Elhadad
Dudi Elhadad
Add API visualizations in Port with swagger UI, embedded URL and markdown information
Example H2

Ready to start?

Introduction

‍

Our goal is to add depth and breadth to the software catalog using visualizations that ensure that all the data is readily accessible within the software catalog. We want to save time for developers, so they don’t need to search hundreds of git repositories and other tools but rather immediately see everything they need. Developer tools are proliferating and this problem should grow as time goes by, and that’s exactly why visualizations in the context of the software catalog really come in handy.

‍

Here are the visualization features we just added:

‍

Markdown documentation visualization

Documentation about software and infrastructure is often scattered across different tools and systems (e.g. readme files inside the repository, knowledge base systems, pinned messages in Slack, etc). This makes life difficult for new developers and slows down their onboarding. Even senior developers may find it difficult to navigate areas in the system that are outside their ordinary work. 

Markdown visualization centralizes all the software/infrastructure documentation and displays it inside Port's developer portal, making it easily searchable and providing the information within the context of the relevant element in the software catalog, saving time and effort. 

‍

Open API - Swagger

Sometimes it’s difficult to find available APIs for a specific microservice. The place to discover those is in the software catalog, and we’ve released a new integration that enables this. In addition to searching and viewing API specifications, the Port user can also perform API requests right from Port’s UI.

You can now import and display OpenAPI specification files as Swagger UI tabs. 

‍

Embedded URLs

Developers’ daily work requires many tools: monitoring, analytics, logging, testing, code management and more. A significant level of context switching happens when developers move  between different tools, all with different interfaces and in different locations. 

Embedded URL visualizations incorporate all the specific tools within the context of the software catalog, from datadog monitoring for a specific microservice to the Grafana dashboard showing cluster metrics.

‍

How it all works

All visualizations are configured in the blueprint definition as one of the blueprint's properties and can be reported easily through the Port API and data exporters (these exports sync directly from git, and when a file is changed in the git repo, the change is automatically reflected in port.

Users can add as many markdown, API and embedded URL tabs as needed! 

{{cta_2}}

‍

Previous article

Next article

{{cta_1}}

Check out Port's pre-populated demo and see what it's all about.

Check live demo

No email required

{{cta_2}}

Contact sales for a technical product walkthrough

Let’s start
{{cta_3}}

Open a free Port account. No credit card required

Let’s start
{{cta_4}}

Watch Port live coding videos - setting up an internal developer portal & platform

Let’s start
{{cta_5}}

Check out Port's pre-populated demo and see what it's all about.

(no email required)

Let’s start
{{cta_6}}

Contact sales for a technical product walkthrough

Let’s start
{{cta_7}}

Open a free Port account. No credit card required

Let’s start
{{cta_8}}

Watch Port live coding videos - setting up an internal developer portal & platform

Let’s start
{{cta-demo-baner}}

Book a demo right now to check out Port's developer portal yourself

{{port-for-backstage}}

Apply to join the Beta for Port's new Backstage plugin

Apply for beta
{{jenkins}}

It's a Trap - Jenkins as Self service UI

Read more
{{gitops}}

How do GitOps affect developer experience?

Read more
{{ebook}}

It's a Trap - Jenkins as Self service UI. Click her to download the eBook

Download eBook
{{cyberark}}

Learning from CyberArk - building an internal developer platform in-house

Read more
{{cta-demo}}
{{reading-box-backstage-vs-port}}

Further reading:

Read: What are the technical disadvantages of Backstage?

Compare: Backstage vs. Port

Example JSON block

{
  "foo": "bar"
}

Order Domain

{
  "properties": {},
  "relations": {},
  "title": "Orders",
  "identifier": "Orders"
}

Cart System

{
  "properties": {},
  "relations": {
    "domain": "Orders"
  },
  "identifier": "Cart",
  "title": "Cart"
}

Products System

{
  "properties": {},
  "relations": {
    "domain": "Orders"
  },
  "identifier": "Products",
  "title": "Products"
}

Cart Resource

{
  "properties": {
    "type": "postgress"
  },
  "relations": {},
  "icon": "GPU",
  "title": "Cart SQL database",
  "identifier": "cart-sql-sb"
}

Cart API

{
 "identifier": "CartAPI",
 "title": "Cart API",
 "blueprint": "API",
 "properties": {
   "type": "Open API"
 },
 "relations": {
   "provider": "CartService"
 },
 "icon": "Link"
}

Core Kafka Library

{
  "properties": {
    "type": "library"
  },
  "relations": {
    "system": "Cart"
  },
  "title": "Core Kafka Library",
  "identifier": "CoreKafkaLibrary"
}

Core Payment Library

{
  "properties": {
    "type": "library"
  },
  "relations": {
    "system": "Cart"
  },
  "title": "Core Payment Library",
  "identifier": "CorePaymentLibrary"
}

Cart Service JSON

{
 "identifier": "CartService",
 "title": "Cart Service",
 "blueprint": "Component",
 "properties": {
   "type": "service"
 },
 "relations": {
   "system": "Cart",
   "resources": [
     "cart-sql-sb"
   ],
   "consumesApi": [],
   "components": [
     "CorePaymentLibrary",
     "CoreKafkaLibrary"
   ]
 },
 "icon": "Cloud"
}

Products Service JSON

{
  "identifier": "ProductsService",
  "title": "Products Service",
  "blueprint": "Component",
  "properties": {
    "type": "service"
  },
  "relations": {
    "system": "Products",
    "consumesApi": [
      "CartAPI"
    ],
    "components": []
  }
}

Component Blueprint

{
 "identifier": "Component",
 "title": "Component",
 "icon": "Cloud",
 "schema": {
   "properties": {
     "type": {
       "enum": [
         "service",
         "library"
       ],
       "icon": "Docs",
       "type": "string",
       "enumColors": {
         "service": "blue",
         "library": "green"
       }
     }
   },
   "required": []
 },
 "mirrorProperties": {},
 "formulaProperties": {},
 "calculationProperties": {},
 "relations": {
   "system": {
     "target": "System",
     "required": false,
     "many": false
   },
   "resources": {
     "target": "Resource",
     "required": false,
     "many": true
   },
   "consumesApi": {
     "target": "API",
     "required": false,
     "many": true
   },
   "components": {
     "target": "Component",
     "required": false,
     "many": true
   },
   "providesApi": {
     "target": "API",
     "required": false,
     "many": false
   }
 }
}

Resource Blueprint

{
 “identifier”: “Resource”,
 “title”: “Resource”,
 “icon”: “DevopsTool”,
 “schema”: {
   “properties”: {
     “type”: {
       “enum”: [
         “postgress”,
         “kafka-topic”,
         “rabbit-queue”,
         “s3-bucket”
       ],
       “icon”: “Docs”,
       “type”: “string”
     }
   },
   “required”: []
 },
 “mirrorProperties”: {},
 “formulaProperties”: {},
 “calculationProperties”: {},
 “relations”: {}
}

API Blueprint

{
 "identifier": "API",
 "title": "API",
 "icon": "Link",
 "schema": {
   "properties": {
     "type": {
       "type": "string",
       "enum": [
         "Open API",
         "grpc"
       ]
     }
   },
   "required": []
 },
 "mirrorProperties": {},
 "formulaProperties": {},
 "calculationProperties": {},
 "relations": {
   "provider": {
     "target": "Component",
     "required": true,
     "many": false
   }
 }
}

Domain Blueprint

{
 "identifier": "Domain",
 "title": "Domain",
 "icon": "Server",
 "schema": {
   "properties": {},
   "required": []
 },
 "mirrorProperties": {},
 "formulaProperties": {},
 "calculationProperties": {},
 "relations": {}
}

System Blueprint

{
 "identifier": "System",
 "title": "System",
 "icon": "DevopsTool",
 "schema": {
   "properties": {},
   "required": []
 },
 "mirrorProperties": {},
 "formulaProperties": {},
 "calculationProperties": {},
 "relations": {
   "domain": {
     "target": "Domain",
     "required": true,
     "many": false
   }
 }
}
{{tabel-1}}

Microservices SDLC

  • Scaffold a new microservice

  • Deploy (canary or blue-green)

  • Feature flagging

  • Revert

  • Lock deployments

  • Add Secret

  • Force merge pull request (skip tests on crises)

  • Add environment variable to service

  • Add IaC to the service

  • Upgrade package version

Development environments

  • Spin up a developer environment for 5 days

  • ETL mock data to environment

  • Invite developer to the environment

  • Extend TTL by 3 days

Cloud resources

  • Provision a cloud resource

  • Modify a cloud resource

  • Get permissions to access cloud resource

SRE actions

  • Update pod count

  • Update auto-scaling group

  • Execute incident response runbook automation

Data Engineering

  • Add / Remove / Update Column to table

  • Run Airflow DAG

  • Duplicate table

Backoffice

  • Change customer configuration

  • Update customer software version

  • Upgrade - Downgrade plan tier

  • Create - Delete customer

Machine learning actions

  • Train model

  • Pre-process dataset

  • Deploy

  • A/B testing traffic route

  • Revert

  • Spin up remote Jupyter notebook

{{tabel-2}}

Engineering tools

  • Observability

  • Tasks management

  • CI/CD

  • On-Call management

  • Troubleshooting tools

  • DevSecOps

  • Runbooks

Infrastructure

  • Cloud Resources

  • K8S

  • Containers & Serverless

  • IaC

  • Databases

  • Environments

  • Regions

Software and more

  • Microservices

  • Docker Images

  • Docs

  • APIs

  • 3rd parties

  • Runbooks

  • Cron jobs

You may also be interested in

Building the perfect internal developer platform

Building the perfect internal developer platform

Read more
How to use JQ commands to speed developer workflows

How to use JQ commands to speed developer workflows

Read more
Debugging K8s with K8sGPT in your internal developer portal

Debugging K8s with K8sGPT in your internal developer portal

Read more

Starting with Port is simple, fast and free.

Let’s start