Forum Discussion

fred33's avatar
fred33
New Contributor
5 years ago

SwaggerSocket support in Swagger ?!

Hello,   we want to do REST with WebSockets, and we have perfect reasons to do it.   There is the SwaggerSocket specifications (for websockets with REST), it looked perfect for our needs !!!   ...
HKosova's avatar
HKosova
SmartBear Alumni (Retired)
5 years ago

Swagger UI does not support WebSockets, and OpenAPI Specification is not really suitable for WebSocket APIs.

 

Check out AsyncAPI instead.

  • fred33's avatar
    fred33
    New Contributor
    5 years ago

    Thank you Helen,

     

    > Swagger UI does not support WebSockets

    Ok, I understand and I will stop investigating this case.

     

    > OpenAPI Specification is not really suitable for WebSocket APIs.

    Well, it's perfectly suitable for some specific cases, like ours.

    As a short example, imagine a database (tables: pet, store, user) that you can manage [control] and for which you would like to be notified [monitor] if something was Created/Updated/Deleted (like by another application for example) :
    - OpenAPI enable to descritbe all resources + operations available from Client > Server (requests + responses) : this represent 100% of the "control" side need and potentially 98% of the doc.
    - Notifications from Server > Client are very simple, and as they are generic for all tables, they require just 2% of the doc: for any table (pet, store, user), you can be notified that an item was Created/Updated/Modified.

    - Swagger UI would enable to test 100% of the controlling side, which is a great job.
    - WebSocket has an interest for performance on high density servers (low bandwidth + fast notification) and to have notifications pass through NAT/Firewall. 

     

    > AsyncAPI

    Thanks for the info, but I have already explored this link from some previous posts on your site.

    AsyncAPI may be great for "Event-Driven Architectures", but for the case reported above it looks like not appropriate (a huge solution for a light problem).

     

    As Swagger is the creator of:

    - SwaggerSockets (specifications for using REST over WebSockets)

    - Open API specs (which define "ws" and "wss" schemes, the schemes for WebSocket))

    - Swagger UI (which accepts "ws" and "wss" schemes for WebSocket)

    this means that people at swagger spent time and energy on this subject (WebSockets + REST) and produced interesting specs and tools managing this.

     

    I can understand that Swagger UI abandonned this support (which may be useful to not so many developers), but this would have been interesting to learn a little bit more from the company that created those specs and tools.

     

    Anyway, thanks again Helen,

     

    Best,