A few years ago I blogged about how to add Swagger examples for requests and responses. But those examples are rendered in JSON. What if your application supports XML, wouldn’t it be nice to see the examples in XML too? Let me show you how to set that up (in .NET Core).

Enable XML requests and responses

Firstly, you need to enable XML in your requests and responses.

services
.AddMvc(options => {
    options.InputFormatters.Add(new XmlSerializerInputFormatter());
    options.OutputFormatters.Add(new XmlSerializerOutputFormatter());
})

Swashbuckle will now show XML in the supported content types select list for the request:

and for the response:

Now you’ll need to consume version 5.0.0-beta or later of my Swashbuckle.AspNetCore.Filters NuGet package. Follow the instructions and implement IExamplesProvider<T>. Then when you choose application/xml in the request or response select list, you’ll see the example in XML format:

Or in JSON format (as before):

Edit July 2018: I’ve blogged a better way to do this. Add an authorization header to your swagger-ui with Swashbuckle (revisited).

Out of the box there’s no way to add an Authorization header to your API requests from swagger-ui. Fortunately (if you’re using ASP.NET), Swashbuckle 5.0 is extendable, so it’s very easy to add a new IOperationFilter to do it for us:

public class AddAuthorizationHeaderParameterOperationFilter : IOperationFilter
{
    public void Apply(Operation operation, SchemaRegistry schemaRegistry, ApiDescription apiDescription)
    {
        if (operation.parameters != null)
        {
            operation.parameters.Add(new Parameter
            {
                name = "Authorization",
                @in = "header",
                description = "access token",
                required = false,
                type = "string"
            });
        }
    }
}

Now all you need to do is register it in your EnableSwagger call:

configuration
    .EnableSwagger(c =>
    {
        c.SingleApiVersion("v1", "Commerce Services - Discounts");

        foreach (var commentFile in xmlCommentFiles)
        {
            c.IncludeXmlComments(commentFile);
        }

        c.OperationFilter<ExamplesOperationFilter>();
        c.OperationFilter<AddAuthorizationHeaderParameterOperationFilter>();
    })
    .EnableSwaggerUi(config => config.DocExpansion(DocExpansion.List));

Once that’s done it’ll give you an input field where you can paste your Authorization header. Don’t forget to add the word “bearer” if you’re using a JWT token:

Edit July 2018: I’ve blogged a better way to do this. Add an authorization header to your swagger-ui with Swashbuckle (revisited).

This is a follow on from my post from last year about Generating example Swagger responses.

Update April 2020: You probably don’t need to do it this way any more. Swashbuckle.AspNetCore supports request examples via XML comments. See my blog post.

Update May 4th 2017: I have created a new NuGet package called Swashbuckle.Examples which contains the functionality I previously described in this blog post. The code lives on GitHub.

I have also created a .NET Standard version of the NuGet package at Swashbuckle.AspNetCore.Filters, which is also on GitHub.

It can also be useful to generate example requests, and in this post I will show you how.

First, install my Swashbuckle.Examples NuGet package, or the .NET Core version Swashbuckle.AspNetCore.Filters

Now decorate your controller methods with the included SwaggerRequestExample attribute:

[Route(RouteTemplates.DeliveryOptionsSearchByAddress)]
[SwaggerRequestExample(typeof(DeliveryOptionsSearchModel), typeof(DeliveryOptionsSearchModelExample))]
[SwaggerResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, Type = typeof(DeliveryOptionsModel), Description = "Delivery options for the country found and returned successfully")]
[SwaggerResponseExample(tHttpStatusCode.OK, typeof(DeliveryOptionsModelExample))]
[SwaggerResponse(HttpStatusCode.BadRequest, Type = typeof(ErrorsModel), Description = "An invalid or missing input parameter will result in a bad request")]
[SwaggerResponse(HttpStatusCode.InternalServerError, Type = typeof(ErrorsModel), Description = "An unexpected error occurred, should not return sensitive information")]
public async Task<IHttpActionResult> DeliveryOptionsForAddress(DeliveryOptionsSearchModel search)
{

Now implement it, in this case via a DeliveryOptionsSearchModelExample (which should implement IExamplesProvider), which will generate the example data. It should return the type you specified when you specified the [SwaggerRequestExample].

public class DeliveryOptionsSearchModelExample : IExamplesProvider
{
    public object GetExamples()
    {
        return new DeliveryOptionsSearchModel
        {
            Lang = "en-GB",
            Currency = "GBP",
            Address = new AddressModel
            {
                Address1 = "1 Gwalior Road",
                Locality = "London",
                Country = "GB",
                PostalCode = "SW15 1NP"
            },
            Items = new[]
            {
                new ItemModel
                {
                    ItemId = "ABCD",
                    ItemType = ItemType.Product,
                    Price = 20,
                    Quantity = 1,
                    RestrictedCountries = new[] { "US" }
                }
            }
        };
    }

Don’t forget to enable the ExamplesOperationFilter when you enable Swagger, as before:

configuration
    .EnableSwagger(c =>
    {
        c.OperationFilter<ExamplesOperationFilter>();
    })
    .EnableSwaggerUi();

Or if you’re using .NET Core

services.AddSwaggerGen(c =>
   {
        c.SwaggerDoc("v1", new Info { Title = "My API", Version = "v1" });
        c.OperationFilter<ExamplesOperationFilter>();

Now that we’ve done all that, we should see the examples output in our swagger.json file, which you can get to by starting your solution and navigating to /swagger/docs/v1.

And the best part is, when you’re using swagger-ui (at /swagger/ui/index), now when you click the example request in order to populate the form, instead of getting an autogenerated request like this:

You’ll get your desired example, like this:

I find that having a valid request on hand is useful for smoke testing your API endpoints are working correctly.

Update April 2020: You probably don’t need to do it this way any more. Swashbuckle.AspNetCore supports request examples via XML comments. See my blog post.

Update May 4th 2017: I have created a new NuGet package called Swashbuckle.Examples which contains the functionality I previously described in this blog post. The code lives on GitHub.

I have also created a .NET Standard version of the NuGet package at Swashbuckle.AspNetCore.Filters, which is also on GitHub.

Swashbuckle is a tool for generating Swagger, the API description language, from your ASP.NET Web Api solution.
Using Swashbuckle, which provides Swagger-UI, you can create pretty living documentation of your web api, like this:

Documenting the Response

In this post I am going to show you how to document the Response, and a new way to generate some response examples.

You can specify the type of response for Swashbuckle a number of ways. Consider a simple API endpoint which returns a list of Countries:

public class CountriesController : DefaultController
{
    [HttpGet]
    public async Task<HttpResponseMessage> Get()
    {
        var resource = new List<Country>
        {
            new Country {Code = "AR", Name = "Argentina"},
            new Country {Code = "BR", Name = "Brazil"},
            // etc etc omitted for brevity
        };

        return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, resource);
    }
}

One way of describing the response code and content for Swashbuckle is using a combination of XML comments, and the ResponseType attribute, like so:

/// <response code="200">Countries returned OK</response>
[HttpGet]
[ResponseType(typeof(IEnumerable<Country>))]
public async Task<HttpResponseMessage> Get()
{

However, this only allows for one type of response.

If your API method can return multiple types, i.e. in the case of an error, then you can use the new SwaggerResponse attribute:

[HttpGet]
[SwaggerResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, Type=typeof(IEnumerable<Country>))]
[SwaggerResponse(HttpStatusCode.BadRequest, Type = typeof(IEnumerable<ErrorResource>))]
public async Task<HttpResponseMessage> Get(string lang)
{

The Swagger 2.0 spec allows for examples to be added to the Response. However, at time of writing Swashbuckle doesn’t support this. Fortunately Swashbuckle is extendible so here is a way of doing it.

Install my Swashbuckle.Examples NuGet package.

Decorate your methods with the new SwaggerResponseExample attribute:

[SwaggerResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, Type=typeof(IEnumerable<Country>))]
[SwaggerResponseExample(HttpStatusCode.OK, typeof(CountryExamples))]
[SwaggerResponse(HttpStatusCode.BadRequest, Type = typeof(IEnumerable<ErrorResource>))]
public async Task<HttpResponseMessage> Get(string lang)

Now you’ll need to add an Examples class, which will implement IExamplesProvider to generate the example data

public class CountryExamples : IExamplesProvider
{
    public object GetExamples()
    {
        return new List<Country>
        {
            new Country { Code = "AA", Name = "Test Country" },
            new Country { Code = "BB", Name = "And another" }
        };
    }
}

And finally enable the ExamplesOperationFilter when you configure Swashbuckle’s startup.

configuration
    .EnableSwagger(c =>
    {
        c.OperationFilter<ExamplesOperationFilter>();
    })
    .EnableSwaggerUi();

Now that we’ve done all that, we should see the examples output in our swagger.json file, which you can get to by starting your solution and navigating to /swagger/docs/v1.

And then, when you browse the swagger-ui at /swagger/ui/index, instead of an autogenerated example like this:

You’ll see your desired example, like this:

Be sure to check out Part 2, where we again use Swashbuckle to generate example requests.