Join Postman at Google Summer of Code 2023

Vinit Shahdeo

March 1, 2023· 4 mins

With a global community of more than 25 million developers, Postman, which initially started as a side project by Postman Co-Founder and CEO Abhinav Asthana, is determined to help build the API-first world. From the very beginning, we open sourced Postman Runtime, Collection SDK, and Newman to allow developers the flexibility to work with APIs in any environment or workflow. Given that open source is ingrained in the company DNA, Postman regularly creates and constantly improves open source projects with the help of our community on GitHub. We’ve participated in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program twice, and it has always been an incredible experience. During GSoC 2021, we worked on projects contributing to AsyncAPI, OpenAPI, and Newman, and you can learn more about what we accomplished here.

We’re excited to announce our return as a mentoring organization at Google Summer Of Code 2023. This year, we will further represent and advocate for open source API specifications. API specifications have evolved over the last decade to provide API providers and consumers with a machine-readable way to describe the surface area of the APIs being published and integrated with. Still, it’s an area undervalued despite its impact on the API ecosystem and the tech industry as a whole. Postman advocates for open source API technologies, and two years ago we started the Postman Open Technologies program to support four distinct areas to scale APIs—specifications, standards, tooling, and data.

We can’t wait to partner with developers across the API-first world for GSoC 2023, and we look forward to all of this year’s collaboration proposals from our amazing community. Keep reading to learn how you can join us!

What is Google Summer of Code (GSoC)?

Google Summer of Code is a global, online program focused on bringing new contributors into open source software development. GSoC contributors work with an open source organization on a 12-week programming project under the guidance of mentors. For more information, click here.

GSoC 2023 Postman projects

We accept original ideas and proposals for every project. Here is a list of 12 projects that you can use as a reference:

1. OpenAPI Componentizer: Loop through any OpenAPI 3.x definition and move common properties to centralized components.
2. Schema.org OpenAPI Catalog: Create an open catalog of OpenAPI definitions for each of the Schema.org objects that will provide a robust set of starting OpenAPI templates.
3. OpenAPI Web Search: Develop an open source approach to finding Swagger and OpenAPI definitions on the open web—crawling web pages looking for API definitions, validating, and indexing them.
4. GitHub OpenAPI Search: Provide a robust way to crawl public Github repositories for machine-readable API definitions.
5. Collection Format: Interactive Mind Map: Create a mind map intended to help everyone learn about the collection format in an interactive and visual manner.
6. AsyncAPI: Authentication Layer for Glee, Support for Different Authentication Frameworks: Implement support for multiple authentication and authorization processes.
7. Data Transformation Utilities Using JSON Schemas: Implement some of the transformation use cases that the JSON Schema Community has been asking for.
8. Bowtie and the World of JSON Schema: Enhance (or replace) Bowtie’s current, simplistic UI.
9. AsyncAPI: Automate Listing of Members of Technical Steering Committee: Develop a GitHub Action (or a bot) that will read VOTERS files from all repos, maintain a single list, and put it on the website.
10. AsyncAPI: Introduce UI Tests and Refactoring in the Website: Automation tests to run on PR level which check the overall build and codebase of the changes made in the PR.
11. AsyncAPI: Add “Autofix” Feature for Common Linting Errors (with Spectral): Provide auto-fix refactoring for the most common and standard spectral linting errors for AsyncAPI.
12. AsyncAPI: Add help/{command} Endpoint: Create an endpoint such as help/{command} to return instructions of a given command to the user.

How to get started

Join our community forum here and head over to the GSoC page to interact with our mentors and discuss your project ideas. This is the primary channel of communication for all GSoC-related queries at Postman.

We welcome you to be a contributor to one of our GSoC projects. Get started by introducing yourself to the available project ideas in the Issues section of our official GSoC GitHub repository. Please refer to the guidelines here.

Need help?

• Create an issue (with the prefix “GSoC”) in the dedicated repo if you’re unable to get a response in the community forum.
• Start a discussion with mentors to propose a new idea. Do not forget to check the guidelines for proposing ideas.
• Send us an email at gsoc@postman.com for any administrative or operational concerns regarding the program.

Submit your proposal on time

You can find the complete Google Summer of Code program timeline here. The contributors can begin registering and submitting project proposals to mentoring organizations—including Postman—on March 20, 2023. Make sure that you follow our guidelines while submitting proposals to us.

All proposals must be submitted by April 4, 2023, at 11:00 am (PDT) / 23:30 pm (IST).

Stay tuned for further information by watching our GSoC repository and community forum. We look forward to collaborating with you. Happy open sourcing!