Swagger UI vs jsdoc

Overview

Swagger UI

Stacks2.1K

Followers1.8K

Votes207

GitHub Stars28.3K

Forks9.2K

jsdoc

Stacks784

Followers155

Votes6

Swagger UI vs jsdoc: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this markdown, we will compare Swagger UI and jsdoc, highlighting the key differences between the two tools.

Real-time API documentation: Swagger UI allows for real-time API documentation, enabling developers to document their APIs and generate interactive documentation instantly. On the other hand, jsdoc is mainly used for documenting JavaScript code, focusing on providing documentation for functions, variables, and classes. While Swagger UI is dedicated to API documentation, jsdoc is a documentation tool for JavaScript code in general.
User Interface: Swagger UI provides a user-friendly and visually pleasing interface, allowing users to interact with the API directly from the documentation. It offers features like trying out API endpoints, sending requests, and viewing responses. Jsdoc, on the other hand, generates documentation in a more traditional format, typically as HTML pages with basic styling. It provides a navigable index and categorizes the content, but lacks the advanced UI features of Swagger UI.
Automatic API Exploration: Swagger UI automatically explores and discovers the available API endpoints based on the underlying code or provided API specifications. It generates a comprehensive list of available endpoints, including their parameters, request bodies, and response schemas. Jsdoc, on the other hand, requires manual annotation of the code to generate documentation. Developers need to explicitly add comments or tags to indicate the purpose and usage of functions, variables, and classes.
Interoperability: Swagger UI is designed to be interoperable and supports various input formats, including OpenAPI Specification (OAS) and Swagger Specification. This allows developers to integrate their existing API specifications or generate new ones using different tools. Jsdoc, on the other hand, is primarily focused on JavaScript code and does not have built-in support for interoperability with other languages or specifications.
Community and Ecosystem: Swagger UI has a large and active community, with extensive resources, tutorials, and support available. It is widely used and integrated with various tools and frameworks in the API development ecosystem. Jsdoc also has a considerable community and ecosystem, but its focus on JavaScript code limits its reach compared to the more API-centric Swagger UI.
Extensibility and Customization: Swagger UI provides a wide range of customization options, allowing developers to tailor the documentation to their specific needs. It supports custom themes, plugins, and extensions, making it highly flexible. Jsdoc also offers customization options, allowing developers to define templates and modify the generated documentation, but it may require more advanced configuration and customization skills.

In summary, Swagger UI excels in providing real-time API documentation with a user-friendly interface and automatic exploration, supporting various specifications and offering extensive customization options. On the other hand, jsdoc is focused on documenting JavaScript code, providing a traditional documentation format with manual annotation requirements and fewer advanced UI features.

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Advice on Swagger UI, jsdoc

StackShare

May 1, 2019

Needs advice

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?"

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Detailed Comparison

Swagger UI	jsdoc
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	JSDoc 3 is an API documentation generator for JavaScript, similar to JavaDoc or PHPDoc. You add documentation comments directly to your source code, right along side the code itself. The JSDoc Tool will scan your source code, and generate a complete HTML documentation website for you.
The UI works in any development environment, be it locally or in the web;Allow end developers to effortlessly interact and try out every single operation your API exposes for easy consumption;Quickly find and work with resources and endpoints with neatly categorized documentation;Cater to every possible scenario with Swagger UI working in all major browsers	Up and running easily; Command line interface;
Statistics
GitHub Stars 28.3K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 9.2K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 2.1K	Stacks 784
Followers 1.8K	Followers 155
Votes 207	Votes 6
Pros & Cons
Pros 49 Open Source 34 Can execute api calls from the documentation 29 Free to use 19 Customizable 14 Easy to implement in .Net Cons 3 Need to learn YAML and RAML 2 Documentation doesn't look that good 1 Doesn't generate code snippets in different languages 1 Does not support hypermedia 1 You don’t actually get in-line error highlighting	Pros 2 Far less verbose 1 Actively maintained 1 Does almost everything TS does 1 No compiler needed 1 Simpler type safe than TypeScript
Integrations
Node.js Git Microsoft Edge Safari Firefox Google Chrome	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Swagger UI, jsdoc?

Postman

It is the only complete API development environment, used by nearly five million developers and more than 100,000 companies worldwide.

Apiary

It takes more than a simple HTML page to thrill your API users. The right tools take weeks of development. Weeks that apiary.io saves.

ReadMe.io

It is an easy-to-use tool to help you build out documentation! Each documentation site that you publish is a project where there is space for documentation, interactive API reference guides, a changelog, and much more.

Docusaurus

Docusaurus is a project for easily building, deploying, and maintaining open source project websites.

Read the Docs

It hosts documentation, making it fully searchable and easy to find. You can import your docs using any major version control system, including Mercurial, Git, Subversion, and Bazaar.

Gelato.io

Gelato.io is a SaaS tool for creating API documentation and developer portals.

MireDot

Generate REST documentation directly from your Java source code. This ensures always up-to-date and accurate documentation with minimal effort.

Gitbook

It is a modern documentation platform where teams can document everything from products, to APIs and internal knowledge-bases. It is a place to think and track ideas for you & your team.

Slate

Slate helps you create beautiful API documentation. Think of it as an intelligent, responsive documentation template for your API.

Ardoq

Ardoq's out of the box visualizations are automatically created in real-time. All changes and relationships are visualized simultaneously and are context sensitive. With Ardoq, you can see your documentation in the perspectives that best suit your needs.

Related Comparisons

Swagger UI vs jsdoc: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this markdown, we will compare Swagger UI and jsdoc, highlighting the key differences between the two tools.

Real-time API documentation: Swagger UI allows for real-time API documentation, enabling developers to document their APIs and generate interactive documentation instantly. On the other hand, jsdoc is mainly used for documenting JavaScript code, focusing on providing documentation for functions, variables, and classes. While Swagger UI is dedicated to API documentation, jsdoc is a documentation tool for JavaScript code in general.
User Interface: Swagger UI provides a user-friendly and visually pleasing interface, allowing users to interact with the API directly from the documentation. It offers features like trying out API endpoints, sending requests, and viewing responses. Jsdoc, on the other hand, generates documentation in a more traditional format, typically as HTML pages with basic styling. It provides a navigable index and categorizes the content, but lacks the advanced UI features of Swagger UI.
Automatic API Exploration: Swagger UI automatically explores and discovers the available API endpoints based on the underlying code or provided API specifications. It generates a comprehensive list of available endpoints, including their parameters, request bodies, and response schemas. Jsdoc, on the other hand, requires manual annotation of the code to generate documentation. Developers need to explicitly add comments or tags to indicate the purpose and usage of functions, variables, and classes.
Interoperability: Swagger UI is designed to be interoperable and supports various input formats, including OpenAPI Specification (OAS) and Swagger Specification. This allows developers to integrate their existing API specifications or generate new ones using different tools. Jsdoc, on the other hand, is primarily focused on JavaScript code and does not have built-in support for interoperability with other languages or specifications.
Community and Ecosystem: Swagger UI has a large and active community, with extensive resources, tutorials, and support available. It is widely used and integrated with various tools and frameworks in the API development ecosystem. Jsdoc also has a considerable community and ecosystem, but its focus on JavaScript code limits its reach compared to the more API-centric Swagger UI.
Extensibility and Customization: Swagger UI provides a wide range of customization options, allowing developers to tailor the documentation to their specific needs. It supports custom themes, plugins, and extensions, making it highly flexible. Jsdoc also offers customization options, allowing developers to define templates and modify the generated documentation, but it may require more advanced configuration and customization skills.

Swagger UI vs jsdoc

Overview