The goal of The OpenAPI Specification is to define a standard, language-agnostic interface to REST APIs which allows both humans and computers to discover and understand the capabilities of the service without access to source code, documentation, or through network traffic inspection. When properly defined via OpenAPI, a consumer can understand and interact with the remote service with a minimal amount of implementation logic. Similar to what interfaces have done for lower-level programming, OpenAPI removes the guesswork in calling the service.
Use cases for machine-readable API interfaces include interactive documentation, code generation for documentation, client, and server, as well as automated test cases. OpenAPI-enabled APIs expose JSON files that correctly adhere to the OpenAPI Specification, documented in this repository. These files can either be produced and served statically, or be generated dynamically from your application.
Without going into a long history of interfaces to Web Services, this is not the first attempt to do so. We can learn from CORBA, WSDL and WADL. These specifications had good intentions but were limited by proprietary vendor-specific implementations, being bound to a specific programming language, and goals which were too open-ended. In the end, they failed to gain traction.
OpenAPI does not require you to rewrite your existing API. It does not require binding any software to a service--the service being described may not even be yours. It does, however, require the capabilities of the service be described in the structure of the OpenAPI Specification. Not all services can be described by OpenAPI--this specification is not intended to cover every possible use-case of a REST-ful API. OpenAPI does not define a specific development process such as design-first or code-first. It does facilitate either technique by establishing clear interactions with a REST API.
This GitHub project is the starting point for OpenAPI. Here you will find the information you need about the OpenAPI Specification, a simple static sample of what it looks like, and some general information regarding the project.
The current version of the OpenAPI specification is 2.0 - and you can find it here.
This repository contains the existing Swagger 1.2 specification as well as proposals for the 2.0 version.
Each section should contain v1.2 and v2.0 folders to avoid confusion between the versions.
Please keep in mind that the other projects under OpenAPI use an independent version system. As such, don't confuse the version of the OpenAPI Specification they support and the version of that given library.
Check out the wiki for additional and relevant information about the project.
This includes:
- Static sample tutorial.
- List of known deployments.
- Revision history.
If you just want to see it work, check out the pet store sample.
Looking to see how you can create your own OpenAPI definition, present it or otherwise use it? Check out our list of tools over at http://swagger.io.
(Yes, there used to be a really long list here, we just moved it to the main website)
Copyright 2015 The Linux Foundation
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.