DocGen vs Swagger UI

Overview

Swagger UI

Stacks2.1K

Followers1.8K

Votes207

GitHub Stars28.3K

Forks9.2K

DocGen

Stacks15

Followers26

Votes0

GitHub Stars50

Forks15

DocGen vs Swagger UI: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this Markdown code, we will discuss the key differences between DocGen and Swagger UI. Both DocGen and Swagger UI are tools commonly used to generate documentation for APIs. However, there are several distinct differences between them that are important to understand.

1. Documentation Generation Approach:

DocGen focuses on generating documentation from the source code directly. It analyzes the code and extracts the necessary information to generate the documentation. On the other hand, Swagger UI relies on manually written YAML or JSON files to define the API documentation. It requires developers to explicitly describe the API endpoints, request parameters, and response structures.

2. Code-level Annotations vs. Configurations:

DocGen heavily relies on code-level annotations to extract information about the API endpoints, request parameters, and response structures. Developers need to annotate their code with specific tags or comments to provide the required details. In contrast, Swagger UI relies on configuration files to define the API documentation. Developers need to write the YAML or JSON files with the required information, making it easier to update the documentation without modifying the code.

3. Real-time API Testing Capabilities:

One key difference between DocGen and Swagger UI is the inclusion of real-time API testing capabilities. Swagger UI provides an interactive interface where developers can send API requests and see the responses directly within the documentation itself. This feature allows for quick and easy API testing during development. DocGen, on the other hand, focuses solely on generating static documentation and does not provide any built-in API testing capabilities.

4. UI Customization Options:

Swagger UI offers more customization options for the user interface of the generated documentation. Developers can modify the layout, theme, and styling according to their preferences. DocGen, however, has limited customization options for the generated documentation interface. It follows a standard template and does not provide much flexibility in terms of UI customization.

5. Language and Framework Support:

DocGen supports a wide range of programming languages and frameworks as it directly extracts information from the source code. It can be used with different languages like Python, Java, JavaScript, and more. On the other hand, Swagger UI is language-agnostic and can be used to document APIs regardless of the programming language or framework used.

6. Collaboration and Sharing Features:

Swagger UI offers collaboration and sharing features that facilitate team collaboration and API documentation sharing. It provides the ability to collaborate on API definitions, comment on specific endpoints, and share the documentation with others. DocGen, on the other hand, lacks these collaboration and sharing features, making it less suitable for collaborative development environments.

Summary

In summary, DocGen focuses on code-level annotations for documentation generation, while Swagger UI relies on separate configuration files. Swagger UI offers real-time API testing capabilities, more UI customization options, and collaborative features, whereas DocGen supports a wide range of programming languages and has limited UI customization options.

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Advice on Swagger UI, DocGen

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	DocGen
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	DocGen is a command-line documentation tool for software products. It takes plain text or CommonMark (Markdown) as input, and generates both a static website and a PDF copy.
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	-
Statistics
GitHub Stars 28.3K	GitHub Stars 50
GitHub Forks 9.2K	GitHub Forks 15
Stacks 2.1K	Stacks 15
Followers 1.8K	Followers 26
Votes 207	Votes 0
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 Does not support hypermedia 1 Doesn't generate code snippets in different languages 1 You don’t actually get in-line error highlighting	No community feedback yet
Integrations
Node.js Git Microsoft Edge Safari Firefox Google Chrome	wkhtmltopdf

What are some alternatives to Swagger UI, DocGen?

Postman

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

Jekyll

Think of Jekyll as a file-based CMS, without all the complexity. Jekyll takes your content, renders Markdown and Liquid templates, and spits out a complete, static website ready to be served by Apache, Nginx or another web server. Jekyll is the engine behind GitHub Pages, which you can use to host sites right from your GitHub repositories.

Hugo

Hugo is a static site generator written in Go. It is optimized for speed, easy use and configurability. Hugo takes a directory with content and templates and renders them into a full html website. Hugo makes use of markdown files with front matter for meta data.

Gatsby

Gatsby lets you build blazing fast sites with your data, whatever the source. Liberate your sites from legacy CMSs and fly into the future.

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.

Hexo

Hexo is a fast, simple and powerful blog framework. It parses your posts with Markdown or other render engine and generates static files with the beautiful theme. All of these just take seconds.

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.

Middleman

Middleman is a command-line tool for creating static websites using all the shortcuts and tools of the modern web development environment.

Gridsome

Build websites using latest web tech tools that developers love - Vue.js, GraphQL and Webpack. Get hot-reloading and all the power of Node.js. Gridsome makes building websites fun again.

Docusaurus

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

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