openapi-format v1.17.0

openapi-format

Format an OpenAPI document by ordering, formatting and filtering fields.

The openapi-format CLI can load an OpenAPI file, sorts the OpenAPI fields by ordering them in a hierarchical order, format the casing of the fields and can output the file with clean indenting, to either JSON or YAML.

Next to the ordering & formatting, the CLI provides additional options to filter fields & parts of the OpenAPI document based on flags, tags, methods, operationID's and even unused components.

The openapi-format CLI has the option to convert an OpenAPI 3.0 document to an OpenAPI version 3.1.

Table of content

• Use-cases
• Features
• Installation
  • Local Installation (recommended)
  • Global Installation
  • NPX usage
• Command Line Interface
• OpenAPI format CLI options
• OpenAPI sort configuration options
• OpenAPI formatting configuration options
• OpenAPI filter options
• CLI sort usage
• CLI filter usage
• CLI rename usage
• CLI convertTo usage
• CLI configuration usage
• Credits

Use-cases

Public documentation: An OpenAPI document is a specification that evolves and changes. To facilitate working with the specification and publishing the document as public documentation, you want to deliver a clean and structured specification. OpenAPI-format helps you to organize the fields by sorting, formatting and filtering specific elements from the OpenAPI like internal endpoints, beta tags, ... and even unused schemas, examples, responses, ... with a clean and optimized OpenAPI document as a result.

Maintenance: When working on large OpenAPI documents or with multiple team members, the file can be become messy and difficult to compare changes. By sorting & formatting from time to time, the fields are all ordered in a structured manner & properly cased, which will help you to maintain the file with greater ease.

CI/CD pipelines: OpenAPI-format can be useful in CI/CD pipelines, where the OpenAPI is used as the source for other documents like Web documentation, Postman collections, test suites, ...

Features

• Order OpenAPI fields in a default order
• Order OpenAPI fields in a custom order
• Order Components elements by alphabet
• Format the casing (camelCase,PascalCase, ...) of component elements
• Filter OpenAPI files based on methods
• Filter OpenAPI files based on flags
• Filter OpenAPI files based on flags values
• Filter OpenAPI files based on tags
• Filter OpenAPI files based on operationID's
• Filter OpenAPI files based on operations definition
• Filter OpenAPI files based on response content-types
• Strip flags from OpenAPI files
• Strip unused components from OpenAPI files
• Convert OpenAPI 3.0 documents to OpenAPI 3.1
• Rename the OpenAPI title
• Support OpenAPI documents in JSON format
• Support OpenAPI documents in YAML format
• Format via CLI
• Format via local or remote config files
• Use as a Module
• Aligned YAML parsing style with Stoplight Studio style
• Support for OpenAPI 3.0
• Support for OpenAPI 3.1 (beta)
• Online playground (coming soon)

Installation

Local Installation (recommended)

While possible to install globally, we recommend that you add the openapi-format CLI to the node_modules by using:

$ npm install --save openapi-format

or using yarn...

$ yarn add openapi-format

Note that this will require you to run the openapi-format CLI with npx openapi-format your-openapi-file.yaml or, if you are using an older versions of npm, ./node_modules/.bin/openapi-format your-openapi-file.yaml.

Global Installation

$ npm install -g openapi-format

NPX usage

To execute the CLI without installing it via npm, use the npx method

$ npx openapi-format your-openapi-file.yaml

Command Line Interface

openapi-format.js <input-file> -o [output-file] [options]

Arguments:
  input-file   the OpenAPI document can be a local or remote file in JSON or YAML format
  output-file  the output file is optional and can be either a .json or .yaml file. 

Options:

  --output, -o          Save the formated OpenAPI file as JSON/YAML             [path]

  --sortFile            The file to specify custom OpenAPI fields ordering      [path]
  --casingFile          The file to specify casing rules                        [path]
  --filterFile          The file to specify filter rules                        [path]

  --no-sort             Don't sort the OpenAPI file                          [boolean]
  --sortComponentsFile  The file with components to sort alphabetically         [path]

  --rename              Rename the OpenAPI title                              [string]
  
  --convertTo           convert the OpenAPI document to OpenAPI version 3.1   [string]

  --configFile          The file with the OpenAPI-format CLI options            [path]

  --lineWidth           Max line width of YAML output                         [number]

  --json                Prints the file to stdout as JSON                    [boolean]
  --yaml                Prints the file to stdout as YAML                    [boolean]

  --help                Show help                                            [boolean]
  --version             Output the version number                            
  --verbose             Output more details of the filter process              [count]

OpenAPI format CLI options

OpenAPI sort configuration options

The CLI will sort the OpenAPI document in the defined order liked defined per OpenAPI key/element. The fields that are not specified will keep their order like it is in the original OpenAPI document, so only defined fields will be re-ordered.

The default sorting based on the defined order (listed in the table below), which is stored in the defaultSort.json file.

You can easily modify this by specifying your own ordering per key, which can be passed on to the CLI (see below for an example on how to do this).

Have a look at the folder yaml-default and compare the "output.yaml" (sorted document) with the "input.yaml" (original document), to see how openapi-format have sorted the OpenAPI document.

OpenAPI filter options

By specifying the desired filter values for the available filter types, the openapi-format CLI will strip out any matching item from the OpenAPI document. You can combine multiple types to filter out a range of OpenAPI items.

For more complex use-cases, we can advise the excellent https://github.com/Mermade/openapi-filter package, which has extended options for filtering OpenAPI documents.

Some more details on the available filter types:

Filter - methods/inverseMethods

=> methods: Refers to the Path Item Object

This will remove all fields and attached fields that match the verbs. In the example below, this would mean that all get, put, post items would be removed from the OpenAPI document.

openapi: 3.0.0
info:
    title: API
    version: 1.0.0
paths:
    /pets:
        get:
            summary: Finds Pets by status
        put:
            summary: Update an existing pet

=> inverseMethods: This option does the inverse filtering, by keeping only the verbs defined and remove all other verbs.

Filter - tags

=> tags: Refers to the "tags" field from the "Operation Object" https://spec.openapis.org/oas/v3.0.3.html#operationObject

This will remove all fields and attached fields that match the tags. In the example below, this would mean that all items with the tags pet or user would be removed from the OpenAPI document.

For example:

openapi: 3.0.0
info:
    title: API
    version: 1.0.0
paths:
    /pets:
        put:
            tags:
                - pet
            summary: Update an existing pet

=> inverseTags: This option does the inverse filtering, by keeping only the tags defined and remove all other tags, including the operations without a tags.

Filter - operationIds

=> operationIds: Refers to the "operationId" field from the Operation Object

This will remove specific fields and attached fields that match the operation ID's. In the example below, this would mean that the item with operationID findPetsByStatus would be removed from the OpenAPI document.

For example:

openapi: 3.0.0
info:
    title: API
    version: 1.0.0
paths:
    /pets:
        get:
            operationId: findPetsByStatus

=> inverseTags: This option does the inverse filtering, by keeping only the operationIds defined and remove all other operationIds, including the operations without an operationId.

Filter - operations

=> operations: Refers to a combination of a OpenAPI method & path from the Path Object & Path item

This will remove specific path items that match the operation definition PUT::/pets. In the example below, this would mean that the item with the path '/pets' and method 'PUT' would be removed from the OpenAPI document.

For example:

openapi: 3.0.0
info:
    title: API
    version: 1.0.0
paths:
    /pets:
        get:
            summary: Finds Pets by status
        put:
            summary: Update an existing pet

An operationId is an optional property. To offer support for OpenAPI documents that don't have operationIds, we have added the operation definition which is the unique combination of the OpenAPI method & path, with a :: separator symbol.

This will allow filtering for very specific OpenAPI items, without the need of adding operationIds to the OpenAPI document.

To facilitate managing the filtering, we have included wildcard options for the operations option, supporting the methods & path definitions.

REMARK: Be sure to put quotes around the target definition.

Strict matching example: "GET::/pets" This will target only the "GET" method and the specific path "/pets"

Method wildcard matching example: "*::/pets" This will target all methods ('get', 'put', 'post', 'delete', 'options', 'head', 'patch', 'trace') and the specific path "/pets"

Path wildcard matching example: "GET::/pets/*" This will target only the "GET" method and any path matching any folder behind the "/pets", like "/pets/123" and "/pets/123/buy".

Method & Path wildcard matching example: "*::/pets/*" A combination of wildcards for the method and path parts is even possible.

Filter - flags/inverseFlags

=> flags: Refers to a custom property that can be set on any field in the OpenAPI document.

This will remove all fields and attached fields that match the flags. In the example below, this would mean that all items with the flag x-exclude would be removed from the OpenAPI document.

For example:

openapi: 3.0.0
info:
    title: API
    version: 1.0.0
paths:
    /pets:
        get:
            x-exclude: true

=> inverseFlags: This option does the inverse filtering, by keeping only the operations, components, tags, x-tagGroups that match the flag(s). This is a very aggressive option to keep only the items that are needed.

Filter - flagValues/inverseFlagValues

=> flagValues: Refers to a flag, custom property which can be set on any field in the OpenAPI document, and the combination with the value for that flag.

This will remove all fields and attached fields that match the flag with the specific value.

A flagValues example:

flagValues:
    - x-version: 1.0
    - x-version: 3.0

In the example below, this would mean that all items with the flag x-version that matches x-version: 1.0 OR x-version: 3.0 would be removed from the OpenAPI document.

openapi: 3.0.0
info:
    title: API
    version: 1.0.0
paths:
    /pets:
        get:
            x-version: 1.0

The filter option flagValues also will remove flags that contain an array of values in the OpenAPI document.

A flagValues example:

flagValues:
    - x-versions: 1.0
    - x-versions: 2.0

In the example below, this would mean that all items with the flag x-versions, which is an array, that match x-version: 1.0 OR x-version: 3.0 would be removed from the OpenAPI document.

openapi: 3.0.0
info:
    title: API
    version: 1.0.0
paths:
    /pets:
        get:
            x-versions:
                - 1.0
                - 3.0
                - 5.0

Have a look at flagValues and flagValues for array values for a practical example.

=> inverseFlagValues: This option does the inverse filtering, by keeping only the operations, components, tags, x-tagGroups that match the flag with the specific value. This is a very aggressive option to keep only the items that are needed.

Filter - responseContent/inverseResponseContent

=> ResponseContent: Refers to the Response Object's content

A content example:

content:
  - application/json

This will remove all the content that match the media types. In the example below, this would mean that all application/json content items would be removed from the OpenAPI document

Example before:

openapi: 3.0.0
info:
    title: API
    version: 1.0.0
paths:
  /pet:
    post:
      tags:
        - pet
      summary: Add a new pet to the store
      description: Add a new pet to the store
      operationId: addPet
      x-visibility: true
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Successful operation
          content:
            application/xml:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/Pet'
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/Pet'
        '405':
          description: Invalid input

Example after:

openapi: 3.0.0
info:
    title: API
    version: 1.0.0
paths:
  /pet:
    post:
      tags:
        - pet
      summary: Add a new pet to the store
      description: Add a new pet to the store
      operationId: addPet
      x-visibility: true
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Successful operation
          content:
            application/xml:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/Pet'
        '405':
          description: Invalid input

=> inverseResponseContent: This option does the inverse filtering, by keeping only the content with media types defined and remove all other content.

Filter - unusedComponents

=> unusedComponents: Refers to a list of reusable component types, from which unused items will be removed.

This option allows you to strip the OpenAPI document from any unused items of the targeted components types. Any item in the list of OpenAPI components that is not referenced as $ref, will get marked and removed from the OpenAPI document.

REMARK: We will recursively strip all unused components, with a maximum depth of 10 times. This means that "nested" components, that become unused, will also get removed

Supported component types that can be marked as "unused":

• schemas
• parameters
• examples
• headers
• requestBodies
• responses

Filter - textReplace

=> textReplace: "search & replace" option to replace text in the OpenAPI specification

The textReplace provides a "search & replace" method, that will search for a text/word/characters in the OpenAPI description, summary, URL fields and replace it with another text/word/characters. This is very useful to replace data in the OpenAPI specification.

A textReplace example:

textReplace:
    - searchFor: 'Pets'
      replaceWith: 'Dogs'
    - searchFor: 'swagger.io'
      replaceWith: 'openapis.org'

This will replace all "Pets" with "Dogs" & "swagger.io" with "openapi.org" in the OpenAPI document.

Filter - stripFlags

=> stripFlags: Refers to a list of custom properties that can be set on any field in the OpenAPI document.

The stripFlags will remove only the flags, the linked parent and properties will remain. In the example below, this would mean that all flags x-exclude itself would be stripped from the OpenAPI document.

Example before:

openapi: 3.0.0
info:
    title: API
    version: 1.0.0
paths:
    /pets:
        get:
          x-exclude: true
          summary: Finds Pets by status

Example after:

openapi: 3.0.0
info:
    title: API
    version: 1.0.0
paths:
    /pets:
        get:
          summary: Finds Pets by status

Filter - preserveEmptyObjects

=> preserveEmptyObjects: Refers to any properties of your OpenAPI document, from which empty object values would be kept.

The preserveEmptyObjects will preserve all empty objects if set to true.

You can also pass a list of keys from which preserve empty objects. For instance a ['schema'] value would only prevent removal of empty objects having for key schema.

REMARK: Please note that openapi-format default behavior is to remove all empty objects from your document, except for examples.

openapi: 3.0.0
info:
    title: API
    version: 1.0.0
paths:
    /pets:
        post:
          requestBody:
            description: Create a new pet in the store
            required: true
            content:
              application/json:
                schema: {}

Example after (with preserveEmptyObjects: false):

openapi: 3.0.0
info:
    title: API
    version: 1.0.0
paths:
    /pets:
        post:
          requestBody:
            description: Create a new pet in the store
            required: true
            content:
              application/json: {}

OpenAPI formatting configuration options

Tools like spectral or speccy, or any of the linting tools, provide a manner to validate & lint OpenAPI specifications to be uniform. The linting tool informs about the incorrect usage of OpenAPI properties & inconsistent field names. This is very useful and helps to guard the quality of the OpenAPI specification. They inform which fields to correct so that the specification will comply with all the defined linting rules.

The openapi-format CLI formatting option can assist with keeping the field names consistent by automatically changing the casing of the properties/keys/names for the different elements in the OpenAPI document. The desired casing can be defined per OpenAPI key/element (see list below). The keys that are not specified will keep their casing like it is in the original OpenAPI document, so only for defined fields, the casing will be changed.

Casing options

REMARK: All special characters are stripped during conversion, except for the @ and $, since they can be part of the query strings.

The casing options are provided by the nano NPM case-anything package.

Format casing - operationId

=> operationId: Refers to the operationId properties in the OpenAPI document.

Formatting casing example:

operationId: kebab-case

Example before:

openapi: 3.0.3
paths:
    /pets:
        get:
          operationId: getPets

openapi-format will format the "getPets" from the original camelcase to kebab-case.

Example after:

openapi: 3.0.3
paths:
    /pets:
        get:
          operationId: get-pets

Format casing - model & schema properties

=> properties: Refers to all the schema properties, that are defined inline in the paths request bodies & responses and the models in the components section of the OpenAPI document.

Formatting casing example:

properties: snake_case

Example before:

openapi: 3.0.3
components:
    schemas:
        UserModel:
            type: object
            properties:
                id:
                    type: integer
                    example: 10
                emailAddress:
                    type: string
                    example: john@doe.com
                firstName:
                    type: string
                    example: John

The CLI will format all the properties like: "id", "username", "firstName" from the original camelcase to snake_case.

Example after:

openapi: 3.0.3
components:
    schemas:
        UserModel:
            type: object
            properties:
                id:
                    type: integer
                    example: 10
                email_address:
                    type: string
                    example: john@doe.com
                first_name:
                    type: string
                    example: John

Format casing - component keys

=> componentsSchemas / componentsExamples / componentsParametersCookie / componentsParametersHeader / componentsParametersQuery / componentsParametersQuery / componentsParametersPath / componentsHeaders / componentsResponses / componentsRequestBodies / componentsSecuritySchemes: Refers to all the model objects that are defined in the components section of the OpenAPI document.

Formatting casing example:

componentsSchemas: PascalCase

Example before:

openapi: 3.0.3
paths:
    /orders:
        get:
            responses:
                content:
                    application/json:
                        schema:
                            $ref: '#/components/schemas/order-model'
components:
    schemas:
        userModel:
            type: object
        order-model:
            type: object
        pet_model:
            type: object

openapi-format will format all the component keys like: "userModel", "order-model", "pet_model" to PascalCase, including formatting all the "$ref" used in the OpenAPI document.

Example after:

openapi: 3.0.3
paths:
    /orders:
        get:
            responses:
                content:
                    application/json:
                        schema:
                            $ref: '#/components/schemas/OrderModel'
components:
    schemas:
        UserModel:
            type: object
        OrderModel:
            type: object
        PetModel:
            type: object

Format casing - parameter names

=> componentsParametersCookie / componentsParametersPath / componentsParametersQuery / componentsParametersHeader: Refers to "name" in the Parameters types: Path, Query or Header, which can be defined inline in the Path or as a reference in the components of the OpenAPI document.

Formatting casing example:

componentsParametersPath: kebab-case

Example before:

openapi: 3.0.3
paths:
    '/pet/{petId}':
        get:
            parameters:
                - name: petId
                  in: path
                  description: ID of pet to return
                - $ref: '#/components/parameters/LimitParam'
components:
    parameters:
        LimitParam:
            name: limitParam
            in: query
            description: max records to return

The CLI will format the "name" of the parameters: Path, Query or Header like: "petId", "limitParam" to kebab-case in the OpenAPI document.

Example after:

openapi: 3.0.3
paths:
    '/pet/{petId}':
        get:
            parameters:
                - name: pet-id
                  in: path
                  description: ID of pet to return
               - $ref: '#/components/parameters/LimitParam'
components:
    parameters:
        LimitParam:
            name: limit-param
            in: query
            description: max records to return

CLI sort usage

• Format a spec with the default sorting and saves it as a new JSON file

$ openapi-format openapi.json -o openapi-formatted.json

• Format a remote spec with the default sorting and saves it as a new JSON file

$ openapi-format https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OAI/OpenAPI-Specification/main/examples/v3.0/api-with-examples.json -o openapi-formatted.json

• Format an OpenAPI JSON document with the default sorting and saves it as a new YAML file

$ openapi-format openapi.json -o openapi.yaml

• Format an OpenAPI document with the default sorting and output it as JSON to STDOUT

$ openapi-format openapi.json --json

• Format an OpenAPI document with the default sorting and output it as YAML to STDOUT

$ openapi-format openapi.json --yaml

• Format an OpenAPI JSON document with the default sorting and save it as YAML

$ openapi-format openapi.json -o openapi.yaml

• Format an OpenAPI document but skip the sorting and save it as a new JSON file

$ openapi-format openapi.json -o openapi-formatted.json --no-sort

This should keep the OpenAPI fields in the same order. This can be needed, when you only want to do a filtering or rename action.

• Convert the OpenAPI 3.0 document to OpenAPI 3.1 but skip the sorting and save it as a new YAML file

$ openapi-format openapi.yaml -o openapi-3.1.yaml --no-sort --convertTo "3.1"

This will convert the OpenAPI 3.0 document into version 3.1 of OpenAPI, without any ordering or filtering. During the conversion, openapi-format will transform all OpenAPI 3.0 properties into the OpenAPI 3.1 properties, as described in the migration guide from Phil Sturgeon.

• Format an OpenAPI document, including sorting all elements in the components section

$ openapi-format openapi.json -o openapi-formatted.json --sortComponentsFile ./test/json-sort-components/customSortComponents.json

This will sort all elements in the components ( components/schemas, components/parameters, components/headers, components/requestBodies, components/responses, ...) section by alphabet.

CLI filter usage

• Format an OpenAPI document by filtering fields, default sorting and saves it as a new file

When you want to strip certain methods ,tags, operationIds, operations, flags you can pass a filterFile which contains the specific values for the methods ,tags, operationIds, operations, flags.

This can be useful to combine with the sorting, to end up with an order and filtered OpenAPI document.

example:

$ openapi-format openapi.json -o openapi-formatted.json --filterFile customFilter.yaml

where the customFilter.yaml would contain a combination of all the elements you want to filter out.

flags:
    - x-visibility
flagValues: [ ]
tags: [ ]
operationIds:
    - addPet
    - findPetsByStatus

CLI rename usage

• Format an OpenAPI document by changing the title and saves it as a new JSON file

During CI/CD pipelines, you might want to create different results of the OpenAPI document. Having the option to rename them might make it easier to work with the results, so that is why we provide this command option.

$ openapi-format openapi.json -o openapi.json --rename "OpenAPI Petstore - OpenAPI 3.0"

which results in

before

{
    "openapi": "3.0.2",
    "info": {
        "title": "Petstore - OpenAPI 3.0",

after

{
    "openapi": "3.0.2",
    "info": {
        "title": "OpenAPI Petstore - OpenAPI 3.0",

CLI convertTo usage

🏗 BETA NOTICE: This feature is considered BETA since we are investigating the configuration syntax and extra formatting/casing capabilities.

• Format & convert the OpenAPI document to OpenAPI version 3.1

openapi-format can help you to upgrade your current OpenAPI 3.0.x document to the latest version OpenAPI 3.1.

$ openapi-format openapi.json -o openapi-3.1.json --convertTo "3.1"

which results in all the changes described in the migration guide from Phil Sturgeon

before

{
    "openapi": "3.0.2",
    "info": {
        "title": "Petstore - OpenAPI",

after

{
    "openapi": "3.1.0",
    "info": {
        "title": "OpenAPI Petstore - OpenAPI",

CLI configuration usage

All the CLI options can be managed in a separate configuration file and passed along the openapi-format command. This will make configuration easier, especially in CI/CD implementations where the configuration can be stored in version control systems.

example:

$ openapi-format openapi.json --configFile openapi-format-options.json

The formatting will happen based on all the options set in the openapi-format-options.json file. All the available OpenAPI format options can be used in the config file.

AsyncAPI documents

For handling AsyncAPI documents, we have created a separate package asyncapi-format to allow customisation specific for AsyncAPI use-cases.

Stoplight Studio

We have adopted the YAML parsing style from Stoplight Studio, by leveraging the @stoplight/yaml package for handling the parsing of OpenAPI YAML files.

By using the Stoplight YAML parsing, the results will be slightly different from when using a normal YAML parsing library, like js-to-yaml. We appreciate the Stoplight Studio tool, since it is an excellent GUI for working with OpenAPI documents for non-OpenAPI experts who will be contributing changes. By adopting the Stoplight Studio YAML parsing, the potential risk of merge conflicts will be lowered, which is the main reason why we opted for using the @stoplight/yaml package.

Credits

This package is inspired by the @microsoft.azure/format-spec from @fearthecowboy. The original code was not available on GitHub, with the last update being 3 years ago, so to improve support and extend it we tried to reproduce the original functionality.

The filter capabilities from openapi-format are a light version grounded by the work from @MikeRalphson on the openapi-filter package.

The casing options available in openapi-format are powered by the excellent case-anything nano package from Luca Ban (@mesqueeb).