What may seem like a trivial enhancement is, in fact, a pivotal step toward realizing our long-term vision of building the world’s most comprehensive and accurate catalog of API functions. Achieving this vision is not a short-term goal; it requires years of meticulous work.
We’ve all encountered hastily assembled API documentation or catalogs riddled with outdated data and incomplete sets. That’s not what we’re building at PolyAPI. Our approach is deliberate and ground-up, ensuring the system evolves alongside the addition of new functions.
Today, the public PolyAPI catalog includes approximately 600 public API functions. However, this number is set to grow rapidly thanks to the addition of reusable schemas in Release 16. This enhancement enables us to efficiently ingest large OpenAPI specs by avoiding unnecessary object duplication.
As we prepare for a future with tens of thousands of API functions, system-level enhancements become essential to maintain usability. Features like pagination, searching, sorting, filtering with typeahead, and automatic schema enhancement from runtime observation are just a few examples. To enable these experiences, we introduced a key new field: ContextName.
Function Organization and Naming
A catalog of tens or even hundreds of thousands of functions requires a naming convention that:
- Ensures unique names across all functions, even those from independent contributors.
- Clearly conveys the use and purpose of each function.
- Remains as concise as possible.
- Keeps typeahead Intellisense manageable for seamless navigation.
We’ve developed a structured naming convention compatible across programming languages to meet these requirements. For example:
poly.OOB.ohip.crm.profiles.getDetails()
This name is short, self-explanatory, and ensures uniqueness—even if multiple independent contributors train similar functions.
Here’s the breakdown of its structure:
| Library | Context | Name | |||
| poly | OOB | ohip | crm | profiles | getDetails |
| 2-4 chars unique source tenant code | system | module | resource | operation | |
This structure enables massive scalability. For example, in the OOB context alone, simple math reveals:
100 systems × 20 modules × 5 resources × 8 operations = 80,000 operations
By using known system names to narrow the scope, users can easily navigate manageable lists as they drill down to the specific operation they need.
The ContextName Attribute
The introduction of the ContextName attribute consolidates the full function path into a single string (minus the implied “poly” prefix). This enhancement enables powerful capabilities, including:
- Typeahead filtering and searching: Quickly find functions with minimal input.
- Sorting by full name: Streamline organization and retrieval.
- Easier matching: Simplify configuration, access controls, logging, auditing, and uniqueness enforcement.
- UI and AI presentation: Deliver clearer, more contextual results.
- Future possibilities: Unlock new use cases as we continue to expand functionality.
Learn More
Want to explore the public catalog and see these enhancements in action? Sign up for free here to discover the growing list of public API functions available in our UI.
Have questions about our capabilities or roadmap? Reach out to us at hello@polyapi.io—we’d love to hear from you!