Streamline API Documentation with Swagger in Spring Boot - A Comprehensive Guide

Swagger is a powerful tool for documenting APIs. It allows developers to easily create and share documentation for their APIs, making it easier for other developers to understand how to use their APIs. In this article, we'll explore how to use Swagger with Spring Boot.

What is Swagger?

Swagger is an open-source software framework that helps developers design, build, document, and consume RESTful web services. It provides a standard format for describing REST APIs, which allows developers to quickly and easily understand how to use an API without needing to read through lengthy documentation.

How to use Swagger with Spring Boot

Spring Boot provides built-in support for Swagger, which makes it easy to integrate Swagger into your Spring Boot application. To get started, you'll need to add the following dependencies to your Spring Boot project:

	<dependency>
		<groupId>io.springfox</groupId>
		<artifactId>springfox-swagger2</artifactId>
		<version>2.9.2</version>
	</dependency>

	<dependency>
		<groupId>io.springfox</groupId>
		<artifactId>springfox-swagger-ui</artifactId>
		<version>2.9.2</version>
	</dependency>

The springfox-swagger2 and springfox-swagger-ui dependencies are used to add Swagger support to your Spring Boot application.

Next, you'll need to create a new configuration file to configure Swagger. Create a new class called SwaggerConfig and add the following code:

	@Configuration
	@EnableSwagger2
	public class SwaggerConfig {
		@Bean
		public Docket api() {
    		return new Docket(DocumentationType.SWAGGER_2)
        			.select()
        			.apis(RequestHandlerSelectors.any())
        			.paths(PathSelectors.any())
        			.build();
		}
	}

This code configures Swagger to include all APIs in your Spring Boot application. You can customize this configuration to include only specific APIs if needed.

With these changes in place, you should be able to access the Swagger UI by navigating to http://localhost:8080/swagger-ui.html in your web browser.

Swagger is a powerful tool for documenting RESTful web services. By integrating Swagger with your Spring Boot application, you can easily create and share documentation for your APIs. With the built-in support provided by Spring Boot, adding Swagger to your project is easy and straightforward.