Slate vs Swagger - Which is better and which have more options?
Swagger and Slate serve two different purposes. Swagger is an attempt at a standardized way of describing a RESTful API (similar, for example, to ApiBlueprint)
Swagger is a JSON based API definition format, which allows for the description of REST APIs.
~ API Design Tooling From Swagger
Slate, on the other hand is a pretty theme for writing nice API docs.
- The two are not mutually exclusive
- Ideally, one should generate your slate documentation from your Swagger API description
The goal of Swagger is to provide a standard upon which others can build extensive tooling (for example: documentation, API explorers, mock servers, code generation, testing utilities etc.). See, for example: Swagger Tooling
More to your question: Some Slate tooling for swagger:
- Here is a link to a Slate themed swagger UI
- Here is a project that generates Slate docs based on your Swagger definition
So the two are not mutually exclusive, but to your direct question: Implementing Swagger will give you more options and greater flexibility (was well as the ability to also generate Slate documentation).
About Slate:
- API documentation Template/Framework
- looks good
- ease of use
- Syntax highlighting
- Language Specific – Tabbed
- Page Search
- 3 columned customizable layout
- We can create table
- Scrollable links to each and every blocks/methods/headings
- Alert Facility [3 types] – warning, success, notice
- Tables for http error codes
- Markdown syntax
- We can use Site logo
- Demo
About Swagger:
- It gives us API access inside the docs itself, where we can check the response for any particular request.
- It gives a clear picture of API responds with their parameters and options.
- YAML based format
- Not suited for hypermedia API
- There is no Design tooling for Swagger
- Responses are in XML or JSON
- Swagger JS -- JavaScript library to connect to swagger-enabled APIs via browser or nodejs
- Swagger Node Express -- Swagger module for node.js express module
- It has swagger UI framework
- Demo