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RAML vs Swagger UI: What are the differences?
What is RAML? RESTful API Modeling Language (RAML) makes it easy to manage the whole API lifecycle from design to sharing. RESTful API Modeling Language (RAML) makes it easy to manage the whole API lifecycle from design to sharing. It's concise - you only write what you need to define - and reusable. It is machine readable API design that is actually human friendly.
What is Swagger UI? dependency-free collection of HTML, Javascript, and CSS assets that dynamically generate beautiful documentation. Swagger UI is a dependency-free collection of HTML, Javascript, and CSS assets that dynamically generate beautiful documentation and sandbox from a Swagger-compliant API.
RAML belongs to "API Tools" category of the tech stack, while Swagger UI can be primarily classified under "Documentation as a Service & Tools".
"API Specification" is the primary reason why developers consider RAML over the competitors, whereas "Open Source" was stated as the key factor in picking Swagger UI.
Rainist, Zalando, and Hootsuite are some of the popular companies that use Swagger UI, whereas RAML is used by Taboola, ikusei, and Anchnet. Swagger UI has a broader approval, being mentioned in 205 company stacks & 107 developers stacks; compared to RAML, which is listed in 9 company stacks and 6 developer stacks.
From a StackShare Community member: "I just started working for a start-up and we are in desperate need of better documentation for our API. Currently our API docs is in a README.md file. We are evaluating Postman and Swagger UI. Since there are many options and I was wondering what other StackSharers would recommend?"
I use Postman because of the ease of team-management, using workspaces and teams, runner, collections, environment variables, test-scripts (post execution), variable management (pre and post execution), folders (inside collections, for better management of APIs), newman, easy-ci-integration (and probably a few more things that I am not able to recall right now).
I recommend Postman because it's easy to use with history option. Also, it has very great features like runner, collections, test scripts runners, defining environment variables and simple exporting and importing data.
I use Swagger UI because it's an easy tool for end-consumers to visualize and test our APIs. It focuses on that ! And it's directly embedded and delivered with the APIs. Postman's built-in tools aren't bad, but their main focus isn't the documentation and also, they are hosted outside the project.
Pros of RAML
- API Specification15
- Human Readable7
- API Documentation6
- Design Patterns & Code Reuse3
- API Modeling2
- Automatic Generation of Mule flow2
- Unit Testing2
- API Mocking1
- SDK Generation1
Pros of Swagger UI
- Open Source48
- Can execute api calls from the documentation34
- Free to use29
- Customizable19
- Easy to implement in .Net14
- Mature, clean spec13
- API Visualization12
- Coverage9
- Scaffolding6
- Easy to use6
- Vibrant and active community5
- Elegant4
- Adopted by tm forum api3
- Clear for React2
- Api1
- Can deploy API to AWS API Gateway and AWS Lambda1
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Cons of RAML
Cons of Swagger UI
- Need to learn YAML and RAML3
- Documentation doesn't look that good2
- Doesn't generate code snippets in different languages1
- You don’t actually get in-line error highlighting1
- Does not support hypermedia1