Accelerates Development with the Design-First Approach

How ByteCraft Labs Accelerates Development with the Design-First Approach & OpenAPI!

At ByteCraft Labs, we believe in building scalable and maintainable software solutions. For some of our latest .NET Core & ReactJS projects, we are following a Design-First Approach to ensure faster development, better collaboration, and robust API design.

Rather than writing API code first, our process begins with a well-defined OpenAPI Specification, allowing our backend and frontend teams to work in parallel while maintaining API consistency.

Step 1: Define the OpenAPI Specification

The OpenAPI Spec (OAS) serves as a contract for API design. Below is a simple example:

openapi: 3.0.0

info:

title: Simple API

description: A simple API for demonstration

version: 1.0.0

servers:

– url: http://localhost:5000/api

paths:

/items:

get:

summary: Get all items

operationId: getItems

tags:

– Items

responses:

“200”:

description: List of items

content:

application/json:

schema:

type: array

items:

type: object

properties:

id:

type: integer

name:

type: string

Step 2: Generate C# API Code from OpenAPI

To speed up development, we generate .NET Core API code automatically from our OpenAPI spec using OpenAPI Generator.

How To Install OpenAPI Generator CLI

npm install -g @openapitools/openapi-generator-cli

How To Generate API Code

openapi-generator-cli generate -i openapi.yaml -g aspnetcore -o GeneratedAPI

This command:

✅Reads the OpenAPI spec (-i openapi.yaml)

✅Generates an ASP.NET Core API (-g aspnetcore)

✅Outputs the code to the GeneratedAPI folder (-o GeneratedAPI)

Step 3: Updating the API When OpenAPI Spec Changes

If we modify the OpenAPI spec (e.g., add new endpoints), we regenerate the code without overwriting custom changes:

openapi-generator-cli generate -i openapi.yaml -g aspnetcore -o GeneratedAPI –skip-overwrite

Step 4: To compare differences between two OpenAPI specs:

npx @redocly/cli openapi diff old_openapi.yaml new_openapi.yaml

Why ByteCraft Labs Uses the Design-First Approach?

Parallel Development – Backend & frontend teams work simultaneously

Faster API Development – Auto-generated code speeds up the process

Consistent Documentation – Always up-to-date Swagger documentation

Better Maintainability – Cleanly structured API layers

With Design First → API Generation → Implementation, we are making API development faster and more efficient! 🎯