Open API Spex

Leverage Open API Specification 3 (formerly Swagger) to document, test, validate and explore your Plug and Phoenix APIs.

• Generate and serve a JSON Open API Spec document from your code
• Use the spec to cast request params to well defined schema structs
• Validate params against schemas, eliminate bad requests before they hit your controllers
• Validate responses against schemas in tests, ensuring your docs are accurate and reliable
• Explore the API interactively with SwaggerUI

Full documentation available on HexDocs.

Installation

The package can be installed by adding :open_api_spex to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:open_api_spex, "~> 3.18"}
  ]
end

Generate Spec

Main Spec

Start by adding an ApiSpec module to your application to populate an OpenApiSpex.OpenApi struct.

defmodule MyAppWeb.ApiSpec do
  alias OpenApiSpex.{Components, Info, OpenApi, Paths, Server}
  alias MyAppWeb.{Endpoint, Router}
  @behaviour OpenApi

  @impl OpenApi
  def spec do
    %OpenApi{
      servers: [
        # Populate the Server info from a phoenix endpoint
        Server.from_endpoint(Endpoint)
      ],
      info: %Info{
        title: "My App",
        version: "1.0"
      },
      # Populate the paths from a phoenix router
      paths: Paths.from_router(Router)
    }
    |> OpenApiSpex.resolve_schema_modules() # Discover request/response schemas from path specs
  end
end

Or you can use your application's spec values in the info: key.

info: %Info{
  title: to_string(Application.spec(:my_app, :description)),
  version: to_string(Application.spec(:my_app, :vsn))
}

Authorization

In case your API requires authorization you can add security schemes as part of the components in the main spec.

components: %Components{
  securitySchemes: %{"authorization" => %SecurityScheme{type: "http", scheme: "bearer"}}
}

Once the security scheme is defined you can declare it. Please note that the key below matches the one defined in the security scheme, in the our example, "authorization".

security: [%{"authorization" => []}]

If you require authorization for all endpoints you can declare the security in the main spec. In case you need authorization only for specific endpoints, or if you are using more than one security scheme, you can declare it as part of each operation.

To learn more about the different security schemes please the check the official documentation.

Operations

For each plug (controller) that will handle API requests, operations need to be defined that the plug/controller will handle.

defmodule MyAppWeb.UserController do
  use MyAppWeb, :controller
  use OpenApiSpex.ControllerSpecs

  alias MyAppWeb.Schemas.{UserParams, UserResponse}

  tags ["users"]
  security [%{}, %{"petstore_auth" => ["write:users", "read:users"]}]

  operation :update,
    summary: "Update user",
    parameters: [
      id: [in: :path, description: "User ID", type: :integer, example: 1001]
    ],
    request_body: {"User params", "application/json", UserParams},
    responses: [
      ok: {"User response", "application/json", UserResponse}
    ]

  def update(conn, %{"id" => id}) do
    json(conn, %{
      data: %{
        id: id,
        name: "joe user",
        email: "joe@gmail.com"
      }
    })
  end
end

Note: In order to prevent Elixir Formatter from automatically adding parentheses to the ControllerSpecs macro call arguments, add :open_api_spex to the import_deps list in .formatter.exs:

.formatter.exs:

[
  import_deps: [:open_api_spex]
]

For further information about defining operations, see OpenApiSpex.ControllerSpecs.

If you need to omit the spec for some action then pass false to the second argument of operation/2 for the action:

operation :create, false

Each definition in a controller action or plug operation is converted to an %OpenApiSpex.Operation{} struct. The definitions are read by your application's ApiSpec module, which in turn is called from the OpenApiSpex.Plug.PutApiSpex plug on each request. The definitions data is cached, so it does not actually extract the definitions on each request.

Note that the names of the OpenAPI fields follow snake_case naming convention instead of OpenAPI's (and JSON Schema's) camelCase convention.

Alternatives to ControllerSpecs-style Operation Specs

%Operation{}

If ControllerSpecs-style operation specs don't provide the flexibility you need, the %Operation{} struct and related structs can be used instead. See the example user controller that uses %Operation{} structs.

For examples of other action operations, see the example web app.

Schemas

Next, declare JSON schema modules for the request and response bodies. In each schema module, call OpenApiSpex.schema/1, passing the schema definition. The schema must have keys described in OpenApiSpex.Schema.t. This will define a %OpenApiSpex.Schema{} struct. This struct is made available from the schema/0 public function, which is generated by OpenApiSpex.schema/1.

You may optionally have the data described by the schema turned into a struct linked to the JSON schema by adding "x-struct": __MODULE__ to the schema.

defmodule MyAppWeb.Schemas do
  alias OpenApiSpex.Schema

  defmodule User do
    require OpenApiSpex

    OpenApiSpex.schema(%{
      # The title is optional. It defaults to the last section of the module name.
      # So the derived title for MyApp.User is "User".
      title: "User",
      description: "A user of the app",
      type: :object,
      properties: %{
        id: %Schema{type: :integer, description: "User ID"},
        name: %Schema{type: :string, description: "User name", pattern: ~r/[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9_]+/},
        email: %Schema{type: :string, description: "Email address", format: :email},
        birthday: %Schema{type: :string, description: "Birth date", format: :date},
        inserted_at: %Schema{
          type: :string,
          description: "Creation timestamp",
          format: :"date-time"
        },
        updated_at: %Schema{type: :string, description: "Update timestamp", format: :"date-time"}
      },
      required: [:name, :email],
      example: %{
        "id" => 123,
        "name" => "Joe User",
        "email" => "joe@gmail.com",
        "birthday" => "1970-01-01T12:34:55Z",
        "inserted_at" => "2017-09-12T12:34:55Z",
        "updated_at" => "2017-09-13T10:11:12Z"
      }
    })
  end

  defmodule UserResponse do
    require OpenApiSpex

    OpenApiSpex.schema(%{
      title: "UserResponse",
      description: "Response schema for single user",
      type: :object,
      properties: %{
        data: User
      },
      example: %{
        "data" => %{
          "id" => 123,
          "name" => "Joe User",
          "email" => "joe@gmail.com",
          "birthday" => "1970-01-01T12:34:55Z",
          "inserted_at" => "2017-09-12T12:34:55Z",
          "updated_at" => "2017-09-13T10:11:12Z"
        }
      }
    })
  end
end

For more examples of schema definitions, see the sample Phoenix app.

Serve the Spec

To serve the API spec from your application, first add the OpenApiSpex.Plug.PutApiSpec plug somewhere in the pipeline.

pipeline :api do
  plug OpenApiSpex.Plug.PutApiSpec, module: MyAppWeb.ApiSpec
end

Now the spec will be available for use in downstream plugs. The OpenApiSpex.Plug.RenderSpec plug will render the spec as JSON:

scope "/api" do
  pipe_through :api
  resources "/users", MyAppWeb.UserController, only: [:create, :index, :show]
  get "/openapi", OpenApiSpex.Plug.RenderSpec, []
end

In development, to ensure the rendered spec is refreshed, you should disable caching with:

# config/dev.exs
config :open_api_spex, :cache_adapter, OpenApiSpex.Plug.NoneCache

Generating the Spec

You can write the swagger file to disk using the following Mix task and optionally, for your convenience, create a direct alias:

mix openapi.spec.json --spec MyAppWeb.ApiSpec
mix openapi.spec.yaml --spec MyAppWeb.ApiSpec

Invoking this task starts the application by default. This can be disabled with the --start-app=false option.

Please make to replace any calls to OpenApiSpex.Server.from_endpoint with a %OpenApiSpex.Server{} struct like below:

  %OpenApi{
    info: %Info{
      title: "Phoenix App",
      version: "1.0"
    },
    # Replace this 👇
    servers: [OpenApiSpex.Server.from_endpoint(MyAppWeb.Endpoint)],
    # With this 👇
    servers: [%OpenApiSpex.Server{url: "https://yourapi.example.com"}],
  }

NOTE: You need to add the ymlr dependency to write swagger file in YAML format:

def deps do
  [
    {:ymlr, "~> 2.0"}
  ]
end

For more options read the docs.

mix help openapi.spec.json
mix help openapi.spec.yaml

Serve Swagger UI

Once your API spec is available through a route (see "Serve the Spec"), the OpenApiSpex.Plug.SwaggerUI plug can be used to serve a SwaggerUI interface. The path: plug option must be supplied to give the path to the API spec.

All JavaScript and CSS assets are sourced from cdnjs.cloudflare.com, rather than vendoring into this package.

scope "/" do
  pipe_through :browser # Use the default browser stack

  get "/", MyAppWeb.PageController, :index
  get "/swaggerui", OpenApiSpex.Plug.SwaggerUI, path: "/api/openapi"
end

scope "/api" do
  pipe_through :api

  resources "/users", MyAppWeb.UserController, only: [:create, :index, :show]
  get "/openapi", OpenApiSpex.Plug.RenderSpec, []
end

Importing an existing schema file

⚠️ This functionality currently converts Strings into Atoms, which makes it potentially vulnerable to DoS attacks. We recommend that you load Open API Schemas from known files during application startup and not dynamically from external sources at runtime.

OpenApiSpex has functionality to import an existing schema, casting it into an %OpenApi{} struct. This means you can load a schema that is JSON or YAML encoded. See the example below:

# Importing an existing JSON encoded schema
open_api_spec_from_json = "encoded_schema.json"
  |> File.read!()
  |> Jason.decode!()
  |> OpenApiSpex.OpenApi.Decode.decode()

# Importing an existing YAML encoded schema
open_api_spec_from_yaml = "encoded_schema.yaml"
  |> YamlElixir.read_all_from_file!()
  |> List.first()
  |> OpenApiSpex.OpenApi.Decode.decode()

You can then use the loaded spec to with OpenApiSpex.cast_and_validate/3, like:

{:ok, _} = OpenApiSpex.cast_and_validate(
  open_api_spec_from_json, # or open_api_spec_from_yaml
  spec.paths["/some_path"].post,
  test_conn
)

Validating and Casting Params

OpenApiSpex can automatically validate requests before they reach the controller action function. Or if you prefer, you can explicitly call on OpenApiSpex to cast and validate the params within the controller action. See OpenApiSpex.cast_value/3 for the latter.

The rest of this section describes implicit casting and validating the request before it reaches your controller action.

First, the plug OpenApiSpex.Plug.PutApiSpec needs to be called in the Router, as described above.

Add the OpenApiSpex.Plug.CastAndValidate plug to a controller to validate request parameters and to cast to Elixir types defined by the operation schema.

# Phoenix
plug OpenApiSpex.Plug.CastAndValidate, json_render_error_v2: true
# Plug
plug OpenApiSpex.Plug.CastAndValidate, json_render_error_v2: true, operation_id: "UserController.create"

The json_render_error_v2: true is a work-around for a bug in the format of the default error renderer. It will be not needed in version 4.0.

For Phoenix apps, the operation_id can be inferred from the contents of conn.private.

The data shape of the default error renderer follows the JSON:API spec for error responses. For convenience, the OpenApiSpex.JsonErrorResponse schema module is available that specifies the shape, and it can be used in your API specs.

Example usage of CastAndValidate in a Phoenix controller:

defmodule MyAppWeb.UserController do
  use MyAppWeb, :controller
  use OpenApiSpex.ControllerSpecs

  alias MyAppWeb.Schemas.{UserParams, UserResponse}

  plug OpenApiSpex.Plug.CastAndValidate, json_render_error_v2: true

  operation :update,
    summary: "Update user",
    description: "Updates with the given params.\nThis is another line of text in the description.",
    parameters: [
      id: [in: :path, type: :integer, description: "user ID"],
      vsn: [in: :query, type: :integer, description: "API version number"],
      "api-version": [in: :header, type: :integer, description: "API version number"]
    ],
    request_body: {"The user attributes", "application/json", UserParams},
    responses: %{
      201 => {"User", "application/json", UserResponse},
      422 => OpenApiSpex.JsonErrorResponse.response()
    }
  def update(
        conn = %{
          body_params: %UserParams{
            name: name,
            email: email,
            birthday: %Date{} = birthday
          }
        },
        %{id: id}
      ) do
    # conn.body_params cast to UserRequest struct
    # conn.params combines path params, query params and header params
    # conn.params.id cast to integer
    # conn.params.vsn cast to integer
    # conn.params[:"api-version"] cast to integer
    # params is the same as conn.params
    # params.id cast to integer

    # Note: Using pattern-matching in the action function's arguments can
    # cause Dialyzer to complain. This is because Dialyzer expects the
    # `conn` and `params` arguments to have string keys, not atom keys.
    # To resolve this, fetch the `:body_params` with
    # `body_params = Map.get(conn, :body_params)`.
  end
end

Now the client will receive a 422 response whenever the request fails to meet the validation rules from the api spec.

The response body will include the validation error message:

{
  "errors": [
    {
      "detail": "Invalid format. Expected :date",
      "source": {
        "pointer": "/data/birthday"
      },
      "title": "Invalid value"
    }
  ]
}

If you would like a different response JSON shape, create a plug module to shape the response, and pass it to CastAndValidate:

plug OpenApiSpex.Plug.CastAndValidate, render_error: MyErrorRendererPlug

defmodule MyErrorRendererPlug do
  @behaviour Plug

  alias Plug.Conn
  alias OpenApiSpex.OpenApi

  @impl Plug
  def init(errors), do: errors

  @impl Plug
  def call(conn, errors) when is_list(errors) do
    response = %{
      errors: Enum.map(errors, &to_string/1)
    }

    json = OpenApi.json_encoder().encode!(response)

    conn
    |> Conn.put_resp_content_type("application/json")
    |> Conn.send_resp(422, json)
  end
end

Generate Examples

OpenApiSpex can generate example data from specs. This has a similar result as SwaggerUI when it generates example requests or responses for an endpoint. This is a convenient way to generate test data for controller/plug tests.

use MyAppWeb.ConnCase

test "create/2", %{conn: conn} do
  request_body = OpenApiSpex.Schema.example(MyAppWeb.Schemas.UserRequest.schema())

  json =
    conn
    |> post(user_path(conn), request_body)
    |> json_response(200)
end

Validate Examples

As schemas evolve, you may want to confirm that the examples given match the schemas. Use the OpenApiSpex.TestAssertions module to assert on schema validations.

use ExUnit.Case
import OpenApiSpex.TestAssertions

test "UsersResponse example matches schema" do
  api_spec = MyAppWeb.ApiSpec.spec()
  schema = MyAppWeb.Schemas.UsersResponse.schema()
  assert_schema(schema.example, "UsersResponse", api_spec)
end

Validate Responses

API responses can be tested against schemas using OpenApiSpex.TestAssertions also:

use MyAppWeb.ConnCase
import OpenApiSpex.TestAssertions

test "UserController produces a UsersResponse", %{conn: conn} do
  json =
    conn
    |> get(user_path(conn, :index))
    |> json_response(200)

  api_spec = MyAppWeb.ApiSpec.spec()
  assert_schema(json, "UsersResponse", api_spec)
end

Copyright and License

Copyright (c) 2017 Michael Buhot

Licensed under the Mozilla Public License, Version 2.0, which can be found in LICENSE.