What does additive compatibility mean?
A response may gain a new property without changing the meaning of existing fields. JSON decoders should ignore unknown properties unless there is a strong validation reason not to. Do not compare complete serialized objects or depend on property order.
How should generated clients be managed?
Record the OpenAPI source version or checksum, review generated diffs, and commit or publish generated artifacts through the application's normal dependency process. Generated code still needs local timeout, retry, secret, and nullable-field policy.
How should migrations be tested?
Run contract fixtures through old and new models, verify error handling, and deploy changes gradually where the integration is critical. Keep a rollback path in application code and monitor parsing failures separately from upstream status failures.
How should compatible client evolution be implemented?
Parse only needed fields, tolerate additive properties, and keep nullable modeling explicit. Isolate upstream models from product models so interface changes do not spread through the application. Keep this responsibility close to the IPRout client so the behavior documented in API Compatibility and Versioning remains consistent across web requests, workers, and scheduled jobs.
How should compatible client evolution be verified?
Replay old and current fixtures through the new client, compare generated schemas, and test mixed deployment versions during rollout. Review numerical and nullable type changes carefully. Automate the stable cases and reserve live checks for controlled environments so verification is repeatable without consuming unnecessary production allowance.
How should compatible client evolution be operated?
Record the contract revision used by generated clients and communicate breaking application assumptions before deployment. Maintain rollback compatibility while multiple replicas are live. Write down the owner and expected behavior so an alert or product change can be handled without reconstructing the original integration decisions.
Where does compatible client evolution stop?
Additive API fields should not require a client release. A consumer that rejects unknown properties or infers success from optional fields creates its own unnecessary breaking changes. Treat that limit as part of the feature contract and direct callers to the related guide when they need a different guarantee or control.
What belongs in the release review for compatible client evolution?
Review the deployed implementation of API Compatibility and Versioning, not only a local sample. Confirm the intended endpoint, credential source, timeout, response model, and fallback from the environment that will carry real traffic. Use the verification cases above as release evidence, inspect generated browser assets and logs for secret exposure, and make sure dashboards identify the workload without storing raw credentials or unnecessary IP data. Record the configuration owner and rollback action before enabling the feature broadly.
When should compatible client evolution be revisited?
Revisit compatible client evolution when traffic volume, plan capacity, application ownership, deployment regions, browser origins, data retention, or the product consequence of a lookup changes. Compare the current implementation with the documented operating boundary rather than assuming the original decision still fits. Update tests and internal runbooks together, then verify the public API contract and related IPRout guides before rolling the change across every service that shares the client or account.
External references
Continue with the standards and official documentation most relevant to this guide.
- OpenAPI Specification (opens in a new tab)
OpenAPI Initiative
- HTTP Semantics (RFC 9110) (opens in a new tab)
RFC Editor