Getting started with Rest API on Java plus Swagger

I have been getting familiar with Java a lot more than I had planned to in my career. It so happens I need to develop a standard set of APIs for public consumption and I happened upon Swagger.io which is an API Framework/Guideline. Its similar to WSDL. It allows you to auto-generate code from Contract-first Document. So you could write what your JSON looks like and Swagger will generate code. I noticed it supported tons of JAX-RS framework. Now JAX-RS is another API-Spec for Java https://jax-rs-spec.java.net/ and it works so well together. There isn’t any official bridge between Swagger and JAX-RS but I was sold. So were other folks in my team. We can generate both server and client code from API specification. Ofcourse we need to do the Business Logic but none of the grunt work.

So JAX-RS is what I am going with. It’s perfect for someone coming from Python Flask/Django world. I suggest this good tutorial videos on JAX-RS with jersey done by Koushik, from Java Brains. You can find the playlist here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqq-6Pq4lTTZh5U8RbdXq0WaYvZBz2rbn There is also advanced JAX-RS which I haven’t checked out yet, but good to know if I need more info. Even though I have production APIs serving millions of users every day, there is so much I don’t know and looking for answers always surprises me.

I am currently using Azure API services for deploying the JAX-RS services and it’s quite a easy as they support git push.

The reason for getting in depth in to JAX-RS is so i can do contract last and annotate for Swagger. But it really depends on your requirements and project

Swagger is not covered in the videos. I will post about it once I have worked out a sample.

Edit: This is the best sample project I have found https://github.com/swagger-api/swagger-samples/tree/master/java/java-jersey-jaxrs

It has everything you need. A JAX-RS sample project with Swagger annotations. I recommend this way, JAX-RS->Swagger, instead if you are not going Contract First method