ApiPeek

Library for creating and comparing API dumps, from different versions of Windows 10.
Sample API diff between Windows 10 1803 -> 1809.
Simplified API diff between Windows 10 1803 -> 1809 with only new types.
ApiPeek library can be used in Windows Phone 8.1+ and Windows 8.1+ projects.
ApiPeek.Compare tool is a simple Console tool in .NET 4.5.2.

The motivation

ApiPeek library was created in the Fall of 2014. My goal was to create a simple library for traversing all available OS API on the target device using Reflection and save the result as a group of simple JSON files, each representing one assembly, zipped together as a single ZIP file.

The second goal of this project was a tool for comparing two API dumps from two different OS versions. Initially I was able to create simple txt files with API diffs, later I upgraded the Comparer tool to generate sexy HTML tree diffs with collapsible sections.

Building the project

The app is written in C# 6.0 and requires Visual Studio 2015 with Windows Store Tools installed.
The app also requires NuGet package Json.NET 8.0.2, that is downloaded automatically during the build process.

Creating API dumps

Just build the ApiPeek.App.WindowsPhone project and run it on your phone or the emulator.
Click the Start API Peek button and wait couple of seconds.
File Save Picker shows up, select where you want to save the API dump = .zip file.
The same approach works on Windows 8.1.

Comparing two API dumps

Currently the API compare process needs some manual steps.
It's necessary to unzip both API dumps inside the ApiPeek.Compare.App.Console project inside the api folder. Don't forget to set the property Copy to Output Directory on extracted files to Always. Then select the target folder names in the Program.cs like this and start the Console app:

string path1 = "win10.10586";
string path2 = "win10.14267";

The Console app runs for only few seconds and then it automatically saves the diff inside the bin/[Debug|Release]/html folder.

All API diffs I created so far are available here: https://github.com/martinsuchan/martinsuchan.github.io/tree/master/ApiPeek/Diffs
and can be browsed like this: https://martinsuchan.github.io/ApiPeek/Diffs/win10.14257.to.win10.14267.fulldiff.html

Known issues

First of all this tool was created as a weekend hackathon project and the code documentation is mostly non-existent, so please be warned before digging deeper how I done it :)
I plan to update the documentation some time in the future + also delete some no longer used pieces of code.

Currently the ApiPeek library does not collect all information about the available API Not supported features right now when traversing the API (non-exhaustive list):

• overriden operators
• constrains on generics
• attributes on types
• nested types

References

• Evolving the Reflection API
• Pure CSS collapsible tree menu

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details