For golang based HTTP/REST API documentation,I choose swagger. go-swagger has several features for swagger documentation. The go-swagger can generate swagger spec based code generation but I already have an REST API server. I use go-swagger with golang comment annotation for swagger spec generation.

For REST API development, Design first with writing spec and then generating codes from it is a good approach. goa is a famous tool for this style.

Generate go-swagger spec

The go-swagger has a command that will let you generate a swagger spec document from codes. The command scan all files from current directory or specific file path to sub directories.

To generate a spec:

swagger generate spec command makes swagger.json spec.

// Package rest HTTP API.
//
// Schemes: http
// Host: localhost
// BasePath: /
// Version: 0.0.1
// Consumes:
// - application/json
// Produces:
// - application/json
// swagger:meta
package rest

//go:generate swagger generate spec -m -i ./swagger.yml -o ./static/swagger.json

Operations and struct model mapping

One of reasons why I choose swagger or api documentation generation tool is that parsing source code and using on api spec.

// swagger:operation POST /v1/articles Article create_article
// Create an article resource
//
// ---
// summary: Create article
// parameters:
//  - in: body
//    required: true
//    schema:
//       $ref: "#/definitions/createArticleRequest"
// responses:
// responses:
//  '200':
//   description: successful operation
//   schema:
//    $ref: "#/definitions/Article"
//  '500':
//   description: failed operation (error)
//   schema:
//    $ref: "#/definitions/Error"
//
func createAppHandler(context *gin.Context) {
...

The definitions/Article and definitions/Error are mapping from struct with swagger:model

// swagger:model 
type Article struct {
    ID         string    `db:"id" json:"id" yaml:"id"`
    Name       string    `db:"name" json:"name" yaml:"name"`
    CreateTime time.Time `db:"create_time" json:"create_time"`
    UpdateTime time.Time `db:"update_time" json:"update_time"`
}

It is convenient if you have complex request and response payloads.

Embedded static asset(swagger.json) with go-bindata

I want to embedded the swagger-ui and redoc frontend page to my rest api server. go-bindata converts any text or binary file into Go source code.

go:generate go-bindata -prefix "static/" -o static/bindata.go -pkg static static/...

That’s it. the swagger.json is embedded in golang code. With gin framework, you can use it with staticbin.

import  "github.com/olebedev/staticbin"

...

router.Use(staticbin.Static(static.Asset, staticbin.Options{
        Dir: "/static",
}))

Embedded with swagger-ui, you can use swagger-doc’s assets for it.

import (
    swaggerDoc "github.com/utahta/swagger-doc"
    swaggerAsset "github.com/utahta/swagger-doc/assets"
)


...

router.Use(staticbin.Static(swaggerAsset.Asset, staticbin.Options{
        Dir: "/swagger-ui",
}))
router.Any("/redoc", gin.WrapH(swaggerDoc.NewRedocHandler("/static/swagger.json", "redoc")))

I’m not sure this approach is good. I think that better approach exists for it. apiblueprint is simple yaml structure than swagger’s yaml. but I have not found good apiblueprint utils for my taste for golang code generation or spec generation from code.