What is Swagger?

Swagger is an open-source framework to facilitate API documentation and development. It provides a standardised way to describe, document, and consume RESTful web services. Swagger makes it easier for developers and clients to understand and interact with services.

At its core, Swagger utilises a specification format known as OpenAPI (formerly Swagger Specification). OpenAPI is a language-agnostic description format used to define RESTful APIs. It allows developers to articulate the functionality of their APIs, including details such as available endpoints, request/response formats, authentication methods, and more.

Why should you use it?

One of the key advantages of Swagger is its interactive documentation, based on OpenAPI specification. This documentation not only serves as a comprehensive guide for developers but also enables clients to explore and test the API directly from a user-friendly interface. It's like having a fully documented and configured Postman inside the browser!

In summary, Swagger and OpenAPI work hand in hand to streamline the API development process, providing a standardized way to define, document, and consume RESTful APIs. This ensures that APIs are well-documented, easily understood, and straightforward to integrate, ultimately fostering collaboration between API providers and consumers.

How to use it with Laravel

There are some packages to integrate Swagger inside a Laravel, the one that I suggest to you is darkaonline/l5-swagger.

First of all you need to install it in your project with Composer
composer require "darkaonline/l5-swagger"

Then inside your .env file you need to put a variable called L5_SWAGGER_CONST_HOST, like the one below used with Sail
L5_SWAGGER_CONST_HOST=http://0.0.0.0/api/v1

We can now publish the configuration file for darkaonline/l5-swagger. Just run this command:
php artisan vendor:publish --provider "L5Swagger\L5SwaggerServiceProvider"

Now we have to set up some rules for the Swagger inside our controllers and methods and generate it.

We put our first comment inside the app/Http/Controllers/Controller.php file. This comment simply describes our API. It will be the "header" text in our page (L5_SWAGGER_CONST_HOST/api/documentation)

/**

* @OA\Info(

* version="1.0.0",

* title="MyAPI Documentation",

* description="Documentation for the public API",

* @OA\Contact(

* email="maiowebdesign@gmail.com"

* ),

* @OA\License(

* name="Apache 2.0",

* url="http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html"

* )

* )

*

* @OA\Server(

* url=L5_SWAGGER_CONST_HOST,

* description="ArticCMS API Server"

* )



*

* @OA\Tag(

* name="myAPI",

* description="API Endpoints of MyAPI"

* )

*/

Now we can define our method in the seme way, adding a comment block before the methods inside the controllers. This is an example for a controller that get all the post inside a blog project. We can easy add our query parameters, like with_catgeories or with_author, and test them directly in the browser. We can also bind the param to an Enum, and define the response codes.

/**

* @OA\Get(

* path="/posts",

* operationId="getPostsList",

* tags={"Posts"},

* summary="Get list of posts",

* description="Returns a list of posts with optional filters.",

* @OA\Parameter(

* name="with_categories",

* in="query",

* description="Include categories associated with each post",

* @OA\Schema(type="boolean")

* ),

* @OA\Parameter(

* name="with_author",

* in="query",

* description="Include author associated with each post",

* @OA\Schema(type="boolean")

* ),

* @OA\Parameter(

* name="sort_by_date",

* in="query",

* description="Sort the posts by date",

* @OA\Schema(type="boolean")

* ),

* @OA\Parameter(

* name="lang",

* in="query",

* description="Language of the posts",

* @OA\Schema(

* type="string",

* enum=App\Enums\LocaleEnum::class,

* example="en_GB"

* )

* ),

* @OA\Parameter(

* name="status",

* in="query",

* description="Status of the posts",

* @OA\Schema(

* type="string",

* enum=App\Enums\Post\PostStatusEnum::class,

* example="draft"

* )

* ),

* @OA\Parameter(

* name="paginate",

* in="query",

* description="Number of posts per page for pagination (default: 15)",

* @OA\Schema(type="integer", default=15)

* ),

* @OA\Response(

* response=200,

* description="Successful operation",

* @OA\JsonContent(

* type="array",

* @OA\Items(ref="#/components/schemas/Post")

* )

* ),

* )

*/

It's also possible to describe our models to have an in-browser documentation of our entities. The method is always the same, just add a comment before your model class. The one below is the definition of a Post model

/**

* @OA\Schema(

* title="Post",

* description="Post model",

* @OA\Property(property="id", type="integer", example=1),

* @OA\Property(property="title", type="string", example="Sample Title"),

* @OA\Property(property="body", type="string", example="Lorem ipsum..."),

* @OA\Property(

* property="status",

* type="string",

* enum=App\Enums\Post\PostStatusEnum::class,

* example="draft",

* description="Status of the post"

* ),

* @OA\Property(

* property="language",

* type="string",

* enum=App\Enums\LocaleEnum::class,

* example="en_GB",

* description="Language of the post"

* ),

* @OA\Property(property="user_id", type="integer", example=1),

* @OA\Property(property="created_at", type="string", format="date-time"),

* @OA\Property(property="updated_at", type="string", format="date-time"),

* )

*/