Modeling Microservice Conversations with RESTalk

Microservices are characterized by their small size and low degree of coupling. As a consequence, building microservice architectures requires composing multiple microservices and determine how they interact to achieve a given client's goal. In this chapter we introduce the concept of RESTful conversation, whereby clients or API gateways perform multiple basic HTTP request/response interactions with one or more microservice APIs. To represent possible sequences of interactions, we introduce the RESTalk visual notation, as well as its textual DSL, and the corresponding metamodel, and show how it can be used to complement existing structural approaches to represent RESTful APIs, such as the OpenAPI Specification. To reveal the degree of coupling between clients and microservices, the language supports the concept of hyperlink flow, showing whether, within a conversation, the links embedded into responses provided by a microservice are used by the client/API gateway to form the subsequent requests.