What is the Google API Discovery Service?
Build tools to work with APIs
You can use the Google API Discovery Service to build client libraries, IDE plugins, and other tools that interact with Google APIs. It provides a lightweight, JSON-based API that exposes machine-readable metadata about Google APIs, including:
- A directory of supported APIs.
- A machine-readable "Discovery document" for each of the supported APIs that includes:
- A list of API resource schemas based on JSON Schema.
- A list of API methods and available parameters for each method.
- A list of available OAuth 2.0 scopes.
- Inline documentation of methods, parameters, and available parameter values.
Other uses for Discovery
What's using it?
Google has built several tools using the service:
- Google API client libraries: Client libraries in various languages for accessing Google APIs.
- Google APIs Explorer: An interactive web-based tool for exploring Google APIs.
- Google API Support in the Google Plugin for Eclipse: An IDE integration that provides support for Google APIs in your Eclipse project.