One of the most essential requirements in the API development phase can be expressed as the documentation requirement. Because what the API methods do or how they are used should be understandable within the limits of the documentation. It is difficult to write the api documentation manually, and it is extremely difficult to keep this documentation up-to-date. Somehow, this documentation must be kept up-to-date and production must continue.
Swagger is a technology that provides a contractual standard and ancillary tools that function within this framework for developing the Rest API. Swagger provides convenience in API design, development, documentation and testing with the standards and tools it offers.
The most important stage of communication is the contract. For example, many people use the English contract to communicate among themselves. The rules are clear. We often make use of Rest APIs when communicating with two computer systems. We use it frequently, but since it is not a standard, there is no standard form of service contract that everyone agrees on, and this is not a good situation in terms of communication. But using the Swagger OpenAPI standard, we can share our APIs in a common language in a format that both humans and machines can understand. People can understand what the service context is by looking at your Open API contracts. In addition, we can generate client or server code for machines that comply with the contract rules. Supporting more than 40 language and application platforms, Swagger is a good platform choice in today’s API development.
Another important need in API development is the need for documentation. When you share your services privately or publicly with other developers, you should have clear documentation of what API methods do and how they work. Manually writing API documentation is both difficult and impossible to keep up to date. Somehow these documents have to be generated automatically. Another feature of Swagger is that it can automatically generate documentation from service contracts held in YAML or JSON format.
For more information: https://swagger.io/
Importance of API Documentation and Swagger
Because APIs are designed to be consumed (consume), it’s critical to ensure consumers can quickly implement and understand your API. For this reason, the api documentation is in an indispensable position. Preparing documentation also feels like torture to most people. In addition, let’s think that a document has been created forcibly. It is equally difficult to maintain its readability and up-to-dateness.
When a person in the consumer position looks at the document, “What is its definition, what does this service do, what kind of operations does it contain, in what style should these operations be used, what type of input and output parameters?” similar questions should be answered easily, leaving no doubt in mind. While writing Rest API applications, a documentation should be created by writing everything manually, not automatically, as the traditional method, in order to determine how many endpoints are connected to, which endpoint’s task location and how to send a request to which endpoint.
In this way, those who use the API will learn and understand how to use what for which job. If one does not want to follow the traditional method, another swagger emerges if a slightly more automatic, that is, a little simpler and more versatile documentation is desired. This otherwise qualified swagger is not only used for documentation purposes. It is produced in the Rest API client code. From there, a direct request can be sent and the results can be accessed. Even without using a Postman-style application, the work can be solved.
Conclusion
Swagger is a highly preferred technology for software. The biggest reason why it is explained as one of the most important needs at the point of API change and development is documentation. Performing some configuration operations of Swagger included in the project is a highly anticipated and important situation. Therefore, these steps must be carefully followed and understood.
