Can you add a Browsable API into an ASP.NET application?

Question

The Django web framework has a Browsable API and I would like to implement something similar in my ASP.NET (with ReactJS) application. Essentially, suppose that there's an API endpoint called api/test; I would like to be able to navigate to https://.../api/test in a web browser and be presented with a web page (React component) that contains what api/test normally returns but in a better, human-readable format like Django does. But when accessed as an API, it returns the content without the surrounding HTML page. The simple controller would look like:

[ApiController]
[Route("api/[controller]")]
public class TestController : ControllerBase
{
    [HttpGet]
    [Produces("text/json")]
    public IList<string> Get()
    {
        return new string[]
        {
            "hello",
            "world"
        };
    }
}

It seems that something similar to Content Negotiation would work. So, I would either have to implement a custom formatter (which I'm not sure is the right approach) or make a middleware of my own.

Does this sort of thing already exist somehow? Any suggestions on how to implement it if it doesn't already exist? Thanks in advance!

JuanR · Answer 1 · 2021-01-15T05:10:53.067

You could use a tool like Swagger.

Swashbuckle is a Nuget package that adds Swagger to your application. It adds a couple of dependencies as well as a configuration file in your App_Start folder.

After adding the package, you can browse to http://whateveryourappnameis.com/swagger and see auto-generated documentation for your API. Here is a sample snapshot from an image service I recently created:

As you can see, it even generates forms to submit requests so you can test your API!

It also supports additional configuration to customize your documentation.

Can you add a Browsable API into an ASP.NET application?

1 Answers1