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Swagger UI vs Wiki.js: What are the differences?
Introduction
This Markdown code provides a comparison between Swagger UI and Wiki.js.
Integration with APIs: Swagger UI is specifically designed for documenting and testing APIs, making it ideal for developers. It provides a user-friendly interface that allows developers to interact with APIs directly. On the other hand, Wiki.js is a more general-purpose platform for creating and managing documentation and knowledge bases, so it may not offer the same level of API integration as Swagger UI.
Collaborative Editing: Wiki.js focuses on collaborative editing, allowing multiple users to work together on creating and updating content. It provides features like real-time editing, version control, and customizable permissions. Swagger UI, on the other hand, does not prioritize collaborative editing and focuses more on providing a clean and interactive interface for API documentation.
Customizability: Wiki.js offers a high level of customizability, allowing users to customize the appearance and functionality of their wiki. It provides a flexible theming system, support for custom CSS and JavaScript, and the ability to extend the platform with plugins. Swagger UI, while still customizable to some extent, is more limited in terms of customization options and is primarily focused on providing a standardized documentation interface.
User Roles and Permissions: Wiki.js provides granular control over user roles and permissions. It allows administrators to define different user roles with specific permissions, ensuring that only authorized users can access and modify certain parts of the wiki. Swagger UI, on the other hand, does not offer built-in user management or role-based permissions, as it primarily focuses on providing a user interface for API documentation.
Structured Documentation: Swagger UI offers a high level of structure for documenting APIs. It provides support for API specifications written in OpenAPI (formerly Swagger) format, allowing developers to define endpoints, request/response formats, authentication methods, etc. This structured approach makes it easier for developers to understand and interact with APIs. Wiki.js, while it supports structured content with the use of markdown and templates, does not have the same level of structure specifically tailored for API documentation.
Extensibility: Swagger UI can be extended with custom plugins and integrations to enhance its functionality. It provides a plugin system that allows developers to add additional features, integrate with external tools, or customize the behavior of Swagger UI. Wiki.js, on the other hand, also offers extensibility through plugins, allowing users to add additional functionality or integrate with external services, but it may have a different scope of use compared to Swagger UI.
In summary, Swagger UI is primarily focused on providing an interactive interface for documenting and testing APIs, while Wiki.js is a more general-purpose platform for creating and managing documentation and knowledge bases. Swagger UI offers better integration with APIs and a structured approach for API documentation, while Wiki.js prioritizes collaborative editing, customizability, user roles and permissions, and extensibility for a broader range of documentation needs.
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 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.
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.
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
Pros of Wiki.js
- Fast speed by node.js1
- Open Source1
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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
Cons of Wiki.js
- No tree structure by default1
