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title	author	description	keywords	ms.author	manager	ms.date	ms.topic	ms.assetid	ms.technology	ms.prod	uid
ASP.NET Core Web API Help Pages using Swagger	spboyer	This tutorial provides a walkthrough of adding Swagger to generate documentation and help pages for a Web API application.	ASP.NET Core,Swagger,Swashbuckle,help pages,Web API	spboyer	wpickett	09/01/2017	article	54bb961d-29d9-4dee-8e2c-a93fc33c16f2	aspnet	asp.net-core	tutorials/web-api-help-pages-using-swagger

ASP.NET Web API Help Pages using Swagger

By Shayne Boyer and Scott Addie

Understanding the various methods of an API can be a challenge for a developer when building a consuming application.

Generating good documentation and help pages for your Web API, using Swagger with the .NET Core implementation Swashbuckle.AspNetCore, is as easy as adding a couple of NuGet packages and modifying the Startup.cs.

Swashbuckle.AspNetCore is an open source project for generating Swagger documents for ASP.NET Core Web APIs.
Swagger is a machine-readable representation of a RESTful API that enables support for interactive documentation, client SDK generation, and discoverability.

This tutorial builds on the sample on Building Your First Web API with ASP.NET Core MVC and Visual Studio. If you'd like to follow along, download the sample at https://github.com/aspnet/Docs/tree/master/aspnetcore/tutorials/first-web-api/sample.

Getting Started

There are three main components to Swashbuckle:

Swashbuckle.AspNetCore.Swagger: a Swagger object model and middleware to expose SwaggerDocument objects as JSON endpoints.
Swashbuckle.AspNetCore.SwaggerGen: a Swagger generator that builds SwaggerDocument objects directly from your routes, controllers, and models. It's typically combined with the Swagger endpoint middleware to automatically expose Swagger JSON.
Swashbuckle.AspNetCore.SwaggerUI: an embedded version of the Swagger UI tool which interprets Swagger JSON to build a rich, customizable experience for describing the Web API functionality. It includes built-in test harnesses for the public methods.

NuGet Packages

Swashbuckle can be added with the following approaches:

Visual Studio

From the Package Manager Console window:
```
Install-Package Swashbuckle.AspNetCore
```
From the Manage NuGet Packages dialog:
- Right-click your project in Solution Explorer > Manage NuGet Packages
- Set the Package source to "nuget.org"
- Enter "Swashbuckle.AspNetCore" in the search box
- Select the "Swashbuckle.AspNetCore" package from the Browse tab and click Install

Visual Studio for Mac

Right-click the Packages folder in Solution Pad > Add Packages...
Set the Add Packages window's Source drop-down to "nuget.org"
Enter Swashbuckle.AspNetCore in the search box
Select the Swashbuckle.AspNetCore package from the results pane and click Add Package

Visual Studio Code

Run the following command from the Integrated Terminal:

dotnet add TodoApi.csproj package Swashbuckle.AspNetCore

.NET Core CLI

Run the following command:

dotnet add TodoApi.csproj package Swashbuckle.AspNetCore

Add and configure Swagger to the middleware

Add the Swagger generator to the services collection in the ConfigureServices method of Startup.cs:

[!code-csharpMain]

In the Configure method of Startup.cs, enable the middleware for serving the generated JSON document and the SwaggerUI:

[!code-csharpMain]

Launch the app, and navigate to http://localhost:<random_port>/swagger/v1/swagger.json. The generated document describing the endpoints appears.

Note: Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, and Firefox display JSON documents natively. There are extensions for Chrome that format the document for easier reading. The following example is reduced for brevity.

{
   "swagger": "2.0",
   "info": {
       "version": "v1",
       "title": "API V1"
   },
   "basePath": "/",
   "paths": {
       "/api/Todo": {
           "get": {
               "tags": [
                   "Todo"
               ],
               "operationId": "ApiTodoGet",
               "consumes": [],
               "produces": [
                   "text/plain",
                   "application/json",
                   "text/json"
               ],
               "responses": {
                   "200": {
                       "description": "Success",
                       "schema": {
                           "type": "array",
                           "items": {
                               "$ref": "#/definitions/TodoItem"
                           }
                       }
                   }
                }
           },
           "post": {
               ...
           }
       },
       "/api/Todo/{id}": {
           "get": {
               ...
           },
           "put": {
               ...
           },
           "delete": {
               ...
   },
   "definitions": {
       "TodoItem": {
           "type": "object",
            "properties": {
                "id": {
                    "format": "int64",
                    "type": "integer"
                },
                "name": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "isComplete": {
                    "default": false,
                    "type": "boolean"
                }
            }
       }
   },
   "securityDefinitions": {}
}

This document drives the Swagger UI, which can be viewed by navigating to http://localhost:<random_port>/swagger:

Each public action method in TodoController can be tested from the UI. Click a method name to expand the section. Add any necessary parameters, and click "Try it out!".

Customization & Extensibility

Swagger provides options for documenting the object model and customizing the UI to match your theme.

API Info and Description

The configuration action passed to the AddSwaggerGen method can be used to add information such as the author, license, and description:

[!code-csharpMain]

The following image depicts the Swagger UI displaying the version information:

XML Comments

XML comments can be enabled with the following approaches:

Visual Studio

Right-click the project in Solution Explorer and select Properties
Check the XML documentation file box under the Output section of the Build tab:

Visual Studio for Mac

Open the Project Options dialog > Build > Compiler
Check the Generate xml documentation box under the General Options section:

Visual Studio Code

Manually add the following snippet to the .csproj file:

[!code-xmlMain]

Configure Swagger to use the generated XML file. For Linux or non-Windows operating systems, file names and paths can be case sensitive. For example, a ToDoApi.XML file would be found on Windows but not CentOS.

[!code-csharpMain]

In the preceding code, ApplicationBasePath gets the base path of the app. The base path is used to locate the XML comments file. TodoApi.xml only works for this example, since the name of the generated XML comments file is based on the application name.

Adding the triple-slash comments to the method enhances the Swagger UI by adding the description to the section header:

[!code-csharpMain]

The UI is driven by the generated JSON file, which also contains these comments:

"delete": {
    "tags": [
        "Todo"
    ],
    "summary": "Deletes a specific TodoItem.",
    "operationId": "ApiTodoByIdDelete",
    "consumes": [],
    "produces": [],
    "parameters": [
        {
            "name": "id",
            "in": "path",
            "description": "",
            "required": true,
            "type": "integer",
            "format": "int64"
        }
    ],
    "responses": {
        "200": {
            "description": "Success"
        }
    }
}

Add a tag to the Create action method documentation. It supplements information specified in the <summary> tag and provides a more robust Swagger UI. The <remarks> tag content can consist of text, JSON, or XML.

[!code-csharpMain]

Notice the UI enhancements with these additional comments.

Data Annotations

Decorate the API controller with attributes, found in System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations, to help drive the Swagger UI components.

Add the [Required] attribute to the Name property of the TodoItem class:

[!code-csharpMain]

The presence of this attribute changes the UI behavior and alters the underlying JSON schema:

"definitions": {
    "TodoItem": {
        "required": [
            "name"
        ],
        "type": "object",
        "properties": {
            "id": {
                "format": "int64",
                "type": "integer"
            },
            "name": {
                "type": "string"
            },
            "isComplete": {
                "default": false,
                "type": "boolean"
            }
        }
    }
},

Add the [Produces("application/json")] attribute to the API controller. Its purpose is to declare that the controller's actions support a return a content type of application/json:

[!code-csharpMain]

The Response Content Type drop-down selects this content type as the default for the controller's GET actions:

As the usage of data annotations in the Web API increases, the UI and API help pages become more descriptive and useful.

Describing Response Types

Consuming developers are most concerned with what is returned — specifically response types and error codes (if not standard). These are handled in the XML comments and data annotations.

The Create action returns 201 Created on success or 400 Bad Request when the posted request body is null. Without proper documentation in the Swagger UI, the consumer lacks knowledge of these expected outcomes. That problem is fixed by adding the highlighted lines in the following example:

[!code-csharpMain]

The Swagger UI now clearly documents the expected HTTP response codes:

Customizing the UI

The stock UI is both functional and presentable; however, when building documentation pages for your API, you want it to represent your brand or theme. Accomplishing that task with the Swashbuckle components requires adding the resources to serve static files and then building the folder structure to host those files.

If targeting .NET Framework, add the Microsoft.AspNetCore.StaticFiles NuGet package to the project:

<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.AspNetCore.StaticFiles" Version="2.0.0" />

Enable the static files middleware:

[!code-csharpMain]

Acquire the contents of the dist folder from the Swagger UI GitHub repository. This folder contains the necessary assets for the Swagger UI page. Copy the contents of that folder into the wwwroot/swagger/ui folder.

Create a wwwroot/swagger/ui/css/custom.css file with the following CSS to customize the page header:

[!code-cssMain]

Reference custom.css in the index.html file:

[!code-htmlMain]

Browse to the index.html page at http://localhost:<random_port>/swagger/ui/index.html. Enter http://localhost:<random_port>/swagger/v1/swagger.json in the header's textbox, and click the Explore button. The resulting page looks as follows:

There is much more you can do with the page. See the full capabilities for the UI resources at the Swagger UI GitHub repository.

15 KiB Raw Blame History

ASP.NET Web API Help Pages using Swagger

Getting Started

NuGet Packages

Visual Studio

Visual Studio for Mac

Visual Studio Code

.NET Core CLI

Add and configure Swagger to the middleware

Customization & Extensibility

API Info and Description

XML Comments

Visual Studio

Visual Studio for Mac

Visual Studio Code

Data Annotations

Describing Response Types

Customizing the UI

15 KiB

Raw Blame History