Scalar API Reference

Generate interactive API documentations from Swagger files. Try our Demo

Features

Uses Swagger/OpenAPI spec files
Request examples for a ton of languages + frameworks
Has an integrated API client
Edit your Swagger files with a live preview
Doesn’t look like it’s 2011

Scalar Townhall on Thu Mar, 28th in Discord

Join us to see upcoming features, discuss the roadmap and chat about APIs with us. 💬

Getting Started
Hosted API Reference
Configuration
Layouts
Themes
Advanced: Styling
Community
Packages
Contributors
License

Getting Started

From a CDN

<!doctype html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>API Reference</title>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <meta
      name="viewport"
      content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
  </head>
  <body>
    <!-- Add your own OpenAPI/Swagger spec file URL here: -->
    <!-- Note: this includes our proxy, you can remove the following line if you do not need it -->
    <!-- data-proxy-url="https://api.scalar.com/request-proxy" -->
    <script
      id="api-reference"
      data-url="https://petstore3.swagger.io/api/v3/openapi.json"
      data-proxy-url="https://api.scalar.com/request-proxy"></script>
    <!-- You can also set a full configuration object like this -->
    <!-- easier for nested objects -->
    <script>
      var configuration = {
        theme: 'purple',
      }

      var apiReference = document.getElementById('api-reference')
      apiReference.dataset.configuration = JSON.stringify(configuration)
    </script>
    <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@scalar/api-reference"></script>
  </body>
</html>

You can also use the following syntax to directly pass an OpenAPI spec:

<script
  id="api-reference"
  type="application/json">
  { … }
</script>

If you’d like to add a request proxy for the API client (to avoid CORS issues):

<script
  id="api-reference"
  type="application/json"
  data-proxy-url="https://api.scalar.com/request-proxy">
  { … }
</script>

With Vue.js

The API Reference is built in Vue.js. If you’re working in Vue.js, too, you can directly use our Vue components. Just install them:

npm install @scalar/api-reference

And import the ApiReference component to your app:

<script setup lang="ts">
import { ApiReference } from '@scalar/api-reference'
</script>

<template>
  <ApiReference />
</template>

You can pass props to customize the API reference.

With React

The API Reference package is written in Vue, that shouldn’t stop you from using it in React though! We have created a client side (untested on SSR/SSG) wrapper in react.

import { ApiReferenceReact } from '@scalar/api-reference-react'
import React from 'react'

function App() {
  return (
    <ApiReferenceReact
      configuration={{
        spec: {
          url: 'https://petstore.swagger.io/v2/swagger.json',
        },
      }}
    />
  )
}

export default App

With Nextjs

Our Next.js handler makes it easy to render a reference, just add it to an Api route handler:

// app/reference/route.ts
import { ApiReference } from '@scalar/nextjs-api-reference'

const config = {
  spec: {
    url: '/swagger.json',
  },
}

export const GET = ApiReference(config)

With Fastify

Our fastify plugin makes it so easy to render a reference, there’s no excuse to not have a documentation for your API.

await fastify.register(require('@scalar/fastify-api-reference'), {
  routePrefix: '/reference',
  configuration: {
    spec: () => fastify.swagger(),
  },
})

Actually, it’s executing the fastify.swagger() call by default (if available). So that’s all you need to add:

await fastify.register(require('@scalar/fastify-api-reference'), {
  routePrefix: '/reference',
})

We wrote a detailed integration guide for Fastify, too.

Read more about the package: @scalar/fastify-api-reference

With Platformatic

Good news: If you’re using a recent version of Platformatic, the Scalar API reference is installed and configured automatically.

With Hono

Our Hono middleware makes it so easy to render a reference:

import { apiReference } from '@scalar/hono-api-reference'

app.get(
  '/reference',
  apiReference({
    spec: {
      url: '/swagger.json',
    },
  }),
)

With ElysiaJS

The @elysiajs/swagger plugin uses our API reference by default.

import { swagger } from '@elysiajs/swagger'
import { Elysia } from 'elysia'

new Elysia()
  .use(swagger())
  .get('/', () => 'hi')
  .post('/hello', () => 'world')
  .listen(8080)

// open http://localhost:8080/swagger

With Express

Our Express middleware makes it so easy to render a reference:

import { apiReference } from '@scalar/express-api-reference'

app.use(
  '/reference',
  apiReference({
    spec: {
      content: OpenApiSpecification,
    },
  }),
)

With NestJS

Our NestJS middleware makes it so easy to render a reference:

import { apiReference } from '@scalar/nestjs-api-reference'

app.use(
  '/reference',
  apiReference({
    spec: {
      url: '/swagger.json',
    },
  }),
)

With Docusaurus

Our Docusaurus plugin makes it easy to render API references. Simple add the following to your Docusaurus config

import type { ScalarOptions } from '@scalar/docusaurus'

plugins: [
  [
    '@scalar/docusaurus',
    {
      label: 'Scalar',
      route: '/scalar',
      configuration: {
        spec: {
          url: 'https://petstore3.swagger.io/api/v3/openapi.json',
        },
      },
    } as ScalarOptions,
  ],
],

For more information, check out the Docusaurus package

With AdonisJS

There’s a community package to generate OpenAPI files in AdonisJS and it comes with support for the Scalar API reference already.

We wrote a detailed integration guide for AdonisJS.

With Laravel

There’s a wonderful package to generate OpenAPI files for Laravel already. Just set the type to external_laravel (for Blade) or external_static (for HTML) and theme to scalar:

<?php
// config/scribe.php

return [
  // …
  'type' => 'external_laravel',
  'theme' => 'scalar',
  // …
];

We wrote a detailed integration guide for Laravel Scribe, too.

With Rust

There’s a wonderful package to generate OpenAPI files for Rust already. Just set the api_route to use Scalar to get started:

use aide::{
    axum::{
        routing::{get_with},
        ApiRouter, IntoApiResponse,
    },
    openapi::OpenApi,
    scalar::Scalar,
};
...
    let router: ApiRouter = ApiRouter::new()
        .api_route_with(
            "/",
            get_with(
                Scalar::new("/docs/private/api.json")
                    .with_title("Aide Axum")
                    .axum_handler(),
                |op| op.description("This documentation page."),
            ),
            |p| p.security_requirement("ApiKey"),
        )
        ...

Hosted API Reference

Wait, this is open source and you can do whatever you want. But if you want to add a nice, customizable guide, collaborate with your team and have everything served through a CDN, create an account on scalar.com.

Configuration

To customize the behavior of the API Reference, you can use the following configuration options:

isEditable: Whether the Swagger editor should be shown.
spec.content: Directly pass an OpenAPI/Swagger spec.
spec.url: Pass the URL of a spec file (JSON or YAML).
proxyUrl: Use a proxy to send requests to other origins.
darkMode: Set dark mode on or off (light mode)
layout: The layout to use, either of modern or classic (see #layouts).
theme: The them to use (see #themes).
showSidebar: Whether the sidebar should be shown.
customCss: Pass custom CSS directly to the component.
searchHotKey: Key used with CNTRL/CMD to open the search modal.
metaData: Configure meta information for the page.
hiddenClients: List of httpsnippet clients to hide from the clients menu, by default hides Unirest, pass [] to show all clients.
onSpecUpdate: Listen to spec changes with a callback function.

For detailed information on how to use these options, refer to the Configuration Section.

Layouts

We support two layouts at the moment, a modern layout (the default) and a Swagger UI inspired classic layout (we jazzed it up a bit though).

Themes

You don’t like the color scheme? We’ve prepared some themes for you:

/* theme?: 'alternate' | 'default' | 'moon' | 'purple' | 'solarized' |
'bluePlanet' | 'saturn' | 'kepler' | 'mars' | 'deepSpace' | 'none' */
<ApiReference :configuration="{ theme: 'moon' }" />

ℹ️ The default theme is … the default theme. If you want to make sure no theme is applied, pass none.

Advanced: Styling

Overwrite our CSS variables. We won’t judge.

:root {
  --theme-font: 'Comic Sans MS', 'Comic Sans', cursive;
}

We’re using the default- prefix for our variables to not overwrite your variables. You can use all variables without a prefix.

/* ✅ Good (without `default` prefix) */
--theme-font: 'Comic Sans MS', 'Comic Sans', cursive;
/* ❌ Bad (with `default` prefix) */
--default-theme-font: 'Comic Sans MS', 'Comic Sans', cursive;

Overwrite our night mode and day mode variables to build your own themes. Here are some of the basic variables to get you started:

.light-mode {
  --theme-color-1: #121212;
  --theme-color-2: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6);
  --theme-color-3: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4);
  --theme-color-accent: #0a85d1;
  --theme-background-1: #fff;
  --theme-background-2: #f6f5f4;
  --theme-background-3: #f1ede9;
  --theme-background-accent: #5369d20f;
  --theme-border-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.08);
}
.dark-mode {
  --theme-color-1: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.81);
  --theme-color-2: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.443);
  --theme-color-3: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.282);
  --theme-color-accent: #8ab4f8;
  --theme-background-1: #202020;
  --theme-background-2: #272727;
  --theme-background-3: #333333;
  --theme-background-accent: #8ab4f81f;
}

Or get more advanced by styling our sidebar!

.light-mode .sidebar {
  --sidebar-background-1: var(--theme-background-1);
  --sidebar-item-hover-color: currentColor;
  --sidebar-item-hover-background: var(--theme-background-2);
  --sidebar-item-active-background: var(--theme-background-2);
  --sidebar-border-color: var(--theme-border-color);
  --sidebar-color-1: var(--theme-color-1);
  --sidebar-color-2: var(--theme-color-2);
  --sidebar-color-active: var(--theme-color-2);
  --sidebar-search-background: var(--theme-background-2);
  --sidebar-search-border-color: var(--theme-border-color);
  --sidebar-search-color: var(--theme-color-3);
}
.dark-mode .sidebar {
  --sidebar-background-1: var(--theme-background-1);
  --sidebar-item-hover-color: currentColor;
  --sidebar-item-hover-background: var(--theme-background-2);
  --sidebar-item-active-background: var(--theme-background-2);
  --sidebar-border-color: var(--theme-border-color);
  --sidebar-color-1: var(--theme-color-1);
  --sidebar-color-2: var(--theme-color-2);
  --sidebar-color-active: var(--theme-color-2);
  --sidebar-search-background: var(--theme-background-2);
  --sidebar-search-border-color: var(--theme-border-color);
  --sidebar-search-color: var(--theme-color-3);
}

Community

We are API nerds. You too? Let’s chat on Discord: https://discord.gg/8HeZcRGPFS

Packages

This repository contains all our open source projects and there’s definitely more to discover.

Package	Description
@scalar/api-client-proxy	API request proxy
@scalar/api-client	API testing client
@scalar/api-reference	beautiful API references
@scalar/cli	CLI to work with OpenAPi files
@scalar/echo-server	a server that replies with the request data
@scalar/express-api-reference	Express plugin
@scalar/fastify-api-reference	Fastify plugin
@scalar/hono-api-reference	Hono middleware
@scalar/mock-server	fake data based on an OpenAPI specification files
@scalar/nestjs-api-reference	NestJS middleware
@scalar/nextjs-api-reference	Next.js adapter
@scalar/swagger-editor	editor tailored to write OpenAPI files
@scalar/swagger-parser	parse OpenAPI files

Contributors

_hanspagel	_tmastrom	_marclave	_hwkr	_{cameronrohani}	_amritk
_geoffgscott	_ATREAY	_Mohib834	_mcollina	_mouhannad-sh	_Amorim33
_dunklesToast	_{FotieMConstant}	_Chinlinlee	_soulchild	_sinh117801	_dotfortun
_{SebastianBienert}	_Mason-Little	_ShadiestGoat	_IHIutch	_jonataw	_Fdawgs
_danp	_chrislearn	_sigpwned