swagger-ui-express creates the Swagger UI page from these definitions.swagger-jsdoc generates OpenAPI definitions from JSDoc comments.To create a Swagger UI page from JSDoc comments, you’ll need a way to pass your documentation to Swagger UI:

The full URL used to retrieve data from the API is formed by adding the endpoint to the base URL: localhost:3000/users.ġ.1: Install swagger-jsdoc and swagger-ui-express Represented by a database model in Express.

Resource: Information representing a real-world object (e.g., a user or book), usually returned by the API as JSON data.

Operation: The HTTP method used to manipulate endpoint paths: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE.

Endpoint path: The path representing the location of the resource (relative to the base URL): /users or /users/1.

Server URL or base URL: The base URL for all API endpoints: localhost:3000 or /api.

To install and run the sample Express API, first clone the repository (replace test-api with the directory name of your choosing):Įnter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode It retrieves user data from JSONPlaceholder. If you don't have one, you can install the Express API used in this tutorial.

By the end, you will have documentation that follows the OpenAPI Specification, presented from a custom /docs endpoint added to your Express API:Īn Express-based REST API running on a local Express server. You can then write JSDoc comments in your API's source code to generate the OpenAPI definitions. In this tutorial, you will set up a Swagger UI documentation web page for an Express API. As this tutorial will show, these definitions can be written in YAML directly in JSDoc comments. Swagger UI creates a web page from OpenAPI Specification definitions. Swagger provides a tool for presenting this documentation: Swagger UI. Second, the comments can be compiled later into a complete set of reference documentation. First, the documentation is directly available to anyone viewing the source code. It’s a set of static file allowing you to write and validate Open API Specification in YAML and see a rendering of the written specification.JSDoc is a popular tool for generating documentation from comments in the source code of your app. The best available tool to write Open API Specification file is Swagger Editor. EditorĮven if an OpenAPI specification is a simple text file which can be edited with any text editor, it’s better to use a specialized one. In last resort, you can easiliy convert YAML to JSON (and vice versa). And almost every tool using OpenAPI specification files handle YAML. YAML seems definitely more easy to write and read for humans. Description: A simple API to learn how to write OpenAPI Specificationĭescription: Returns a list containing all persons.

Swagger editor tutorial