swagger

Swagger is a term with two distinct meanings. In general English use, it describes a confident, often arrogant, manner or gait. As a verb, to swagger means to walk or behave with a bold, self-assured bearing.

The word’s etymology traces to early modern English, with its sense linked to strutting or displaying confidence. It commonly appears in descriptions of people who present themselves with conspicuous self-assurance, sometimes to impress others.

In software development, Swagger refers to a suite of tools and, originally, a specification for describing RESTful APIs. The Swagger specification provides a machine-readable interface that describes the available API operations, inputs, and outputs, enabling easier client generation, testing, and documentation. The specification was created by Tony Tam at Wordnik and later evolved into a broader ecosystem. In 2016, SmartBear joined the project and the specification was renamed the OpenAPI Specification as part of the OpenAPI Initiative under the Linux Foundation. Today, the term Swagger is often used to describe the tooling that surrounds the OpenAPI ecosystem, though the formal standard is OpenAPI.

Key components in the Swagger/OpenAPI toolkit include Swagger UI, which renders interactive API documentation directly from an OpenAPI description; Swagger Editor, for authoring or editing API definitions; and Swagger Codegen, which can generate client libraries and server stubs in multiple languages. SwaggerHub provides a hosted platform for collaborating on API design and documentation.

OpenAPI/Swagger is widely adopted for API design and documentation, while complementing alternative description formats such as RAML or API Blueprint.