Although most web applications support RESTful APIs, unlike SOAP APIs, REST APIs rely on HTTP. They also lack a Web Services Description Language equivalent (WSDL), which can be used to describe the request and response structure between providers and consumers. Many REST API providers use Microsoft Word documents and wiki pages to document API usage without a contract service. These formats can make it challenging to collaborate and maintain document versions, especially when there are many APIs, resources, or applications in iterative development. These documents can also be difficult to integrate into automated testing applications.
The open-source Swagger framework can address these issues. The framework includes the OpenAPI specification (previously known as the Swagger specification), which allows for RESTful API documentation in JSON or YAML. This is a human-friendly subset of JSON. Swagger documents are quickly processed using various programming languages. They can also be checked into source control to ensure that version management is done during software development.
Swagger could be better. We discovered gaps between our documentation requirements and Swagger’s basic capabilities when we used the framework for documenting our APIs. We will discuss the issues we faced during our documentation process and how we dealt with them.
Implementing Swagger extensions
Streamlining Swagger’s functions for aggregating documents
Create a tool that outputs Swagger documentation to an HTML page
You can download the solutions we created (see ” Downloads“). Our examples can be used to create your Swagger customizations.
Using Swagger
Swagger’s editing tools make creating API documents easy and verify that they comply with the OpenAPI specification. Swagger editor allows you to create and import API documentation and view it in an interactive environment. The right-hand display pane shows the formatted document. It also shows any changes made in the code editor. The code editor indicates any formatting errors. Both panes can be expanded or collapsed.
The screenshot’s red arrows indicate the correspondence between posts and get definitions in OpenAPI Specification. yaml. Also, see the POST documentation and GET in the preview document.
YEdit can be used with Eclipse as an IDE. It checks and highlights YAML syntax and allows you to edit and format it.
Extending Swagger
Although Swagger API documents can be edited with existing tools, specific documentation scenarios pose challenges. These were some practical problems we faced while documenting our APIs using Swagger.
API consumers required information specific to our APIs. However, the OpenAPI Specification did not include a standard.
API users needed samples of responses and requests, but the editor could not include them.
We had to create a rich, human-readable document with samples for API users. This document could be in an online HTML document.
These problems were addressed by creating our attributes, tools, and templates based on OpenAPI Specifications.
Property extensions
Swagger can be extended using the x- extension. We created these extensions for our API and examples of how they can be used.
These properties apply to the API response or payload fields: