What is swagger-jsdoc?
swagger-jsdoc is a Node.js library that allows you to integrate Swagger/OpenAPI documentation into your Express.js or other Node.js applications. It generates the Swagger specification based on JSDoc comments in your code, making it easier to maintain and update API documentation.
What are swagger-jsdoc's main functionalities?
Generate Swagger Documentation
This feature allows you to generate Swagger documentation from JSDoc comments in your code. The `options` object specifies the OpenAPI version, API info, and the files containing the JSDoc comments.
const swaggerJsdoc = require('swagger-jsdoc');
const options = {
definition: {
openapi: '3.0.0',
info: {
title: 'Express API with Swagger',
version: '1.0.0',
},
},
apis: ['./routes/*.js'], // files containing annotations as above
};
const swaggerSpec = swaggerJsdoc(options);
Integrate with Express
This feature demonstrates how to integrate Swagger UI with an Express application. The Swagger documentation is served at the `/api-docs` endpoint.
const express = require('express');
const swaggerUi = require('swagger-ui-express');
const swaggerJsdoc = require('swagger-jsdoc');
const app = express();
const options = {
definition: {
openapi: '3.0.0',
info: {
title: 'Express API with Swagger',
version: '1.0.0',
},
},
apis: ['./routes/*.js'],
};
const swaggerSpec = swaggerJsdoc(options);
app.use('/api-docs', swaggerUi.serve, swaggerUi.setup(swaggerSpec));
app.listen(3000, () => {
console.log('Server is running on port 3000');
});
JSDoc Annotations
This feature shows how to use JSDoc annotations to document an API endpoint. The annotations provide metadata about the endpoint, such as the HTTP method, summary, and response schema.
/**
* @swagger
* /users:
* get:
* summary: Retrieve a list of users
* responses:
* 200:
* description: A list of users
* content:
* application/json:
* schema:
* type: array
* items:
* type: object
* properties:
* id:
* type: integer
* name:
* type: string
*/
app.get('/users', (req, res) => {
res.json([{ id: 1, name: 'John Doe' }]);
});
Other packages similar to swagger-jsdoc
swagger-ui-express
swagger-ui-express is a middleware for Express.js that serves auto-generated Swagger UI. It is often used in conjunction with swagger-jsdoc to serve the generated Swagger documentation. While swagger-jsdoc focuses on generating the Swagger specification, swagger-ui-express focuses on serving it in a user-friendly interface.
openapi-generator
openapi-generator is a tool that can generate client libraries, server stubs, API documentation, and configuration from an OpenAPI Specification. Unlike swagger-jsdoc, which generates the OpenAPI spec from JSDoc comments, openapi-generator takes an existing OpenAPI spec and generates code and documentation from it.
redoc
redoc is a tool for generating API documentation from OpenAPI specifications. It provides a customizable and responsive HTML documentation. Unlike swagger-jsdoc, which generates the OpenAPI spec, redoc focuses on rendering the documentation from an existing spec.
swagger-jsdoc
This library reads your JSDoc-annotated source code and generates an OpenAPI (Swagger) specification.

Installation
npm install swagger-jsdoc --save
Or
yarn add swagger-jsdoc
Supported specifications
Documentation
It's available within /docs
.
Webpack integrations
Reporting issues
Before starting a new issue, please check whether there is an existing one. It is quite possible that the topic you would like to bring up has been discussed already in the past.
In case of an issue which hasn't been considered yet, please include as much information as possible. This will help maintainers and other users relate to your problem and possibly solve it.
Guidelines:
- Describe what you were doing when the issue appeared.
- Add a set of steps to reproduce your issue.
- Include screenshots.
- Give examples on expected vs actual behavior.
- Share your failed attempts: what you have tried and what you have considered.
Contributing
The project exists thanks to the many contributors who shared their use cases, questions, comments and suggestions for improvements.
Here's how to jump in and contribute yourself:
- Fork the project and clone it locally.
- Create a branch for each separate topic. Semantic commit messages will be highly appreciated.
- Comment your code as if you are going to maintain it in the future.
- Use the rich set of unit tests as an example and add more for the new use cases. This will not only enable you to programatically reproduce your fix faster than setting up an application, but it will also make you super cool! :)
- Push to your changes to the origin of your repository and create a new pull request towards the upstream master. (this repository)