ASP.NET Core web API documentation with Swagger

Swagger (OpenAPI) is a language-agnostic specification for describing REST APIs. It allows both computers and humans to understand the capabilities of a REST API without direct access to the source code. Its main goals are to:

• Minimize the amount of work needed to connect decoupled services.
• Reduce the amount of time needed to accurately document a service.

OpenApi vs. Swagger

• OpenAPI is a specification.
• Swagger is tooling that uses the OpenAPI specification. For example, OpenAPIGenerator and SwaggerUI.

OpenAPI specification (openapi.json)

The OpenAPI specification is a document that describes the capabilities of your API. The document is based on the XML and attribute annotations within the controllers and models. It’s the core part of the OpenAPI flow and is used to drive tooling such as SwaggerUI. By default, it’s named openapi.json. Here’s an example of an OpenAPI specification, reduced for brevity:

{
  "openapi": "3.0.1",
  "info": {
    "title": "API V1",
    "version": "v1"
  },
  "paths": {
    "/api/Todo": {
      "get": {
        "tags": [
          "Todo"
        ],
        "operationId": "ApiTodoGet",
        "responses": {
          "200": {
            "description": "Success",
            "content": {
              "text/plain": {
                "schema": {
                  "type": "array",
                  "items": {
                    "$ref": "#/components/schemas/ToDoItem"
                  }
                }
              },
              "application/json": {
                "schema": {
                  "type": "array",
                  "items": {
                    "$ref": "#/components/schemas/ToDoItem"
                  }
                }
              },
              "text/json": {
                "schema": {
                  "type": "array",
                  "items": {
                    "$ref": "#/components/schemas/ToDoItem"
                  }
                }
              }
            }
          }
        }
      },
      "post": {
        …
      }
    },
    "/api/Todo/{id}": {
      "get": {
        …
      },
      "put": {
        …
      },
      "delete": {
        …
      }
    }
  },
  "components": {
    "schemas": {
      "ToDoItem": {
        "type": "object",
        "properties": {
          "id": {
            "type": "integer",
            "format": "int32"
          },
          "name": {
            "type": "string",
            "nullable": true
          },
          "isCompleted": {
            "type": "boolean"
          }
        },
        "additionalProperties": false
      }
    }
  }
}

Swagger UI

Swagger UI offers a web-based UI that provides information about the service, using the generated OpenAPI specification. Both Swashbuckle and NSwag include an embedded version of Swagger UI, so that it can be hosted in your ASP.NET Core app using a middleware registration call. The web UI looks like this: