OpenAPI Renderer Plugin for Obsidian

Integrate OpenAPI specification management into Obsidian with features for version control, visualization, editing, and easy navigation of API specs.

Why?

I once wrote documentation for my small project directly in Obsidian while working on the database. Later, I needed to work with API documentation, so I started looking for suitable solutions among Obsidian plugins. Not finding any good options, I decided to create a plugin that allows writing Swagger UI documentation directly in Obsidian, without the need to switch between different applications. I hope I’ve managed to create something useful. If you have any suggestions for improvement, feel free to leave any issues here!

Key features

• Edit and view OpenAPI specifications using Swagger UI
• Manage specification versions: create, view, restore, and delete
• Access all tracked OpenAPI specifications in your vault through a single user-friendly view interface

Installation

1. Manual:
   1. Download the last release assets and copy them into your . obsidian/plugins/openapi-renderer directory (create it if it doesn’t exist)
   2. Enable the plugin in Obsidian settings (Settings → Community plugins).
2. Via the Community plugins Browser:
   1. Go to Settings -> Community plugins, click on Browse button and search for OpenAPI Renderer. Install it
   2. Enable the plugin in Obsidian settings (Settings → Community plugins).

What this plugin can do?

Note: You need to enable the Detect all file extension option in Settings -> Files and Links.

By default, this plugin processes all files with .yaml or .json extensions as OpenAPI specifications. When you open any YAML or JSON file in Explorer, it will open in OpenAPI View and be treated as an OpenAPI specification. You can configure this behavior in plugin settings: OpenAPI View -> Register YAML and JSON for processing by default?.

The plugin has 4 main functions:

1. Edit specification files
2. Render them in Swagger UI
3. Version control
4. Overview of all specifications "registered" for versioning

Versioning and overview are optional features - you don't have to use them if you don't need them. The core functionality is editing and rendering.

Edit and Preview

There are two ways to open the view for editing or previewing specifications:

1. Select a specification file in Explorer (works when Register YAML and JSON for processing by default? is enabled)
2. Right-click the file and select Open in OpenAPI View
3. Through other views (Version and Entry)

Both methods will open the OpenAPI View, which has two modes:

• Source mode: A CodeMirror-based editor for file editing
• Preview mode: Renders specification in Swagger UI, with $ref resolution support (this functionality hasn't been widely tested)

How it looks:

• Source mode:
  
• Preview mode:
  

Available actions in the top actions bar:

• View:
  • Change mode (source / preview)
  • Open OpenAPI Version view for this file in the new tab
• Source mode:
  • Anchors (opens a modal with available anchors for this file)
  • Extensions (you can enable or disable some extensions for the source mode. This applies locally)
  • Format content
  • Convert between yaml / json
  • Change theme mode (dark / light)
• Preview mode:
  • Mode indicator (shows current rendering mode: "fast" when view is linked with another OpenAPI View and $ref resolving is disabled, or "full" in non-linked mode with $ref resolving enabled)
  • Rerender the preview
  • Change theme mode (dark / light)

Versioning

You can access this mode in two ways:

1. Via action button in OpenAPI View
2. Via action button for the file in Entry View

This mode allows you to save and roll back to any version of your specifications. You can export versions as HTML and view differences between any two versions of a file.

The Version View interface is divided into two parts:

1. Draft version
2. Version list

How it looks:

Draft version is your current "raw" version from the file, not yet saved. You can save it to the Version list, preview it, and open it in OpenAPI View.

Version list shows your specification versions and groups your specification versions by time periods like "today", "yesterday", etc.

Available actions for each version:

• Preview
• Restore to... (restores the file to selected version)
• Diff (compare two selected versions)
• Delete (soft delete - version won't be used in restore operations)
• Restore (recovers a soft-deleted version)
• Delete permanently (removes all data about selected version)
• Export (exports selected version as HTML file for sharing or browser viewing)

Top bar actions:

• View:
  • Export (exports all versions in one zip file as HTML)

Overview

Access this view by clicking the "Open OpenAPI Entry View" button on the ribbon panel.

This view provides a convenient interface to manage all specifications registered for tracking.

How it looks:

When you open the view, you'll see the "Home" page. Click the "Browse" button in the top navigation bar to see your files.

The browse page displays specification files as cards in a grid layout. Each card shows the last update time and number of registered versions for that file.

Available actions for each card (click the 'Plus' button to open):

• Open in OpenAPI View
• Open in Version View
• Export (all data as HTML files in a zip)
• Restore last file version (restores file in vault to last version, works even if file was deleted from the vault)
• Remove file from tracking (removes all saved versions but keeps file in vault)

Top bar actions:

• View:
  • Export all files and their versions as a zip file

Credits

Special thanks to mnaoumov for valuable insights and contributions, which greatly supported the development of this plugin.

Reporting Issues

If you encounter any bugs or unexpected behavior, please open an issue on GitHub. If you want to offer a new feature, feel free to suggest.

Your involvement makes the plugin better for everyone.