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Rest.li vs Swagger UI: What are the differences?
# Introduction
Rest.li and Swagger UI are both popular tools used in API development, each with its own unique features and functionalities. Understanding the key differences between these two tools can help developers make informed decisions on which one to choose for their projects.
1. **Architecture:** Rest.li is a framework for building RESTful APIs that enables developers to define APIs using a domain-specific language, while Swagger UI is a tool for documenting and visualizing RESTful APIs. Rest.li provides a more structured approach to API development, while Swagger UI focuses on helping users interact with and understand APIs through its user-friendly interface.
2. **Interactive Documentation:** Rest.li does not provide out-of-the-box interactive documentation capabilities, making it more suitable for experienced developers who are comfortable working with code. On the other hand, Swagger UI offers interactive documentation that allows users to explore and test APIs without the need to write any code, making it more accessible to a wider audience.
3. **Code Generation:** Rest.li supports code generation for multiple programming languages, allowing developers to automatically generate client libraries and server stubs based on their API definitions. Swagger UI also offers code generation capabilities, but it primarily focuses on generating interactive documentation for APIs.
4. **Community Support:** Rest.li is supported by a smaller community compared to Swagger UI, which is backed by the OpenAPI Initiative (OAI) and has a larger user base. The extensive community support for Swagger UI provides users with access to a wealth of resources, tutorials, and plugins to enhance their API development experience.
5. **Customization:** Rest.li offers more flexibility in terms of customization, allowing developers to tailor their APIs to meet specific requirements. Swagger UI, while customizable to a certain extent, has limitations in terms of how much users can modify the visual presentation of their API documentation.
6. **Compatibility:** Rest.li is tailored for LinkedIn's tech stack and is best suited for projects that require a similar infrastructure. On the other hand, Swagger UI is more flexible and can be integrated with a wide range of tech stacks, making it a versatile choice for developers working on diverse projects.
# Summary
In summary, Rest.li and Swagger UI differ in their architecture, interactive documentation capabilities, code generation support, community backing, customization options, and compatibility with different tech stacks.
Advice on Rest.li and Swagger UI
StackShare Editors
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?"
Replies (3)
Jagdeep Singh
Tech Lead at ucreate.it · | 8 upvotes · 377.2K views
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).
Jadenko
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.
Sadik Ay
Backend Engineer · | 2 upvotes · 348.2K views
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.
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Learn MorePros of Rest.li
Pros of Swagger UI
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Pros of Swagger UI
- Open Source49
- 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 Rest.li
Cons of Swagger UI
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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
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What is Rest.li?
Rest.li is an open source REST framework for building robust, scalable RESTful architectures using type-safe bindings and asynchronous, non-blocking IO. Rest.li fills a niche for applying RESTful principals at scale with an end-to-end developer workflow for buildings REST APIs that promotes clean REST practices, uniform interface design and consistent data modeling.
What is Swagger UI?
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
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What companies use Rest.li?
What companies use Swagger UI?
What companies use Rest.li?
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See which teams inside your own company are using Rest.li or Swagger UI.
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What tools integrate with Rest.li?
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What are some alternatives to Rest.li and Swagger UI?
Spring
A key element of Spring is infrastructural support at the application level: Spring focuses on the "plumbing" of enterprise applications so that teams can focus on application-level business logic, without unnecessary ties to specific deployment environments.
Postman
It is the only complete API development environment, used by nearly five million developers and more than 100,000 companies worldwide.
Insomnia REST Client
Insomnia is a powerful REST API Client with cookie management, environment variables, code generation, and authentication for Mac, Window, and Linux.
OpenAPI
It is a publicly available application programming interface that provides developers with programmatic access to a proprietary software application or web service.
Retrofit
Retrofit turns your HTTP API into a Java interface