6 posts tagged with "Swagger"

I've long believed in the benefits of static typing. Static typing helps you catch errors early, improves code navigation and makes refactoring easier. In recent years I've been using TypeScript on the front end and C# on the back end to get these benefits. I wrote previously about how to do this with NSwag and I thought it was probably worth returning to the topic. How would I do the same thing now?

For many years I've been a big fan of using NSwag to generate TypeScript and CSharp clients for APIs. I've written about it before in Generate TypeScript and CSharp clients with NSwag.

You're likely aware of the popularity of excellent projects like tRPC which provide a way to use TypeScript end-to-end. However, if you're working in a polyglot environment where your back end is written in C# or [insert other language here], and your front end is written in TypeScript, then cannot take advantage of that. However, by generating front end clients from a server's OpenAPI specs, it's possible to have integration tests that check your front end and your back end are aligned.

This post will show you how to do that using NSwag.

Swashbuckle can fail to generate a swagger / Open API document with the message "The same schemaId is already used...". This post explains what that means, and offers a way to work around it.

For API endpoints that return multiple types, you can use inheritance with Swashbuckle to get create a Swagger / Open API definition featuring the variety of available types. Serving all these types is not the default behaviour. This post shows you how to opt in.

NSwag is a great tool for generating client libraries in C# and TypeScript from Open API / Swagger definitions. You can face issues where Open API property names collide due to the nature of the C# language, and when you want to use decimal for your floating point numeric type over double. This post demonstrates how to get over both issues.

Generating clients for APIs is a tremendous way to reduce the amount of work you have to do when you're building a project. Why handwrite that code when it can be auto-generated for you quickly and accurately by a tool like NSwag? To quote the docs: