- Custom Rulesets: Create custom rules to lint JSON or YAML objects
- Ready-to-use Rulesets: Validate and lint OpenAPI v2 & v3.x and AsyncAPI Documents
- API Style Guides: Automated API Style Guides using rulesets improve consistency across all your APIs
- Ready-to-use Functions: Built-in set of functions to help create custom rules. Functions include pattern checks, parameter checks, alphabetical ordering, a specified number of characters, provided keys are present in an object, etc.
- Custom Functions: Create custom functions for advanced use cases
Overview
🧰 Installation
The easiest way to install spectral is to use either npm:
npm install -g @stoplight/spectral-cli
Or yarn:
yarn global add @stoplight/spectral-cli
You can find more installation methods here.
💻 Usage
1. Create a local ruleset
Spectral, being a generic YAML/JSON linter, needs a ruleset to lint files. A ruleset is a JSON, YAML, or JavaScript/TypeScript file (often the file will be called .spectral.yaml for a YAML ruleset) that contains a collection of rules, which can be used to lint other JSON or YAML files such as an API description.
To get started, run this command in your terminal to create a .spectral.yaml file that will use Spectral's predefined rulesets based on OpenAPI or AsyncAPI:
echo 'extends: ["spectral:oas", "spectral:asyncapi"]' > .spectral.yaml
If you would like to create your own rules, check out the Custom Rulesets page.
2. Lint
Use this command if you have a ruleset file in the same directory as the documents you are linting:
spectral lint myapifile.yaml
Use this command to lint with a custom ruleset, or one that's located in a different directory than the documents being linted:
spectral lint myapifile.yaml --ruleset myruleset.yaml
📖 Documentation
Once you've had a look through the getting started material, some of these guides can help you become a power user.
- Different Workflows - When and where should you use Spectral? Editors, Git-hooks, Continuous Integration, GitHub Actions, wherever you like!
- Using the command-line interface - Quickest way to get going with Spectral is in the CLI.
- Using the JavaScript API - Access the raw power of Spectral via the JS, or hey, TypeScript if you want.
- Custom Rulesets - Need something more than the core rulesets provide? Fancy building your own API Style Guide? Learn how to create a custom ruleset.
- Custom Functions - Handle more advanced rules, by writing a little JavaScript/TypeScript and calling it as a function.
ℹ️ Support
If you need help using Spectral or have any questions, please use GitHub Discussions, or visit the Stoplight Community Discord. These communities are a great place to share your rulesets, or show off tools that leverage Spectral.
If you have a bug or feature request, please create an issue.
🌎 Real-World Rulesets
- Adidas - Adidas were one of the first companies to release their API Style Guide in a written guide and a Spectral ruleset. Lots of good rules to try in here.
- APIs You Won't Hate - An opinionated collection of rules based on advice in the APIs You Won't Hate community.
- Azure - Ruleset and complimentary style guide for creating OpenAPI 2 or 3 definitions of Azure services.
- Box - Lots of Custom Functions being used to enforce good practices that the Box API governance folks are interested in.
- DigitalOcean - Keeping their OpenAPI nice and tidy, enforcing use of
$ref (probably to minimize conflicts), naming conventions for Operation IDs, and all sorts of other handy OpenAPI tips.
- Tranascom - Don't even think about using anything other than
application/json.
Here are more real-world examples of Spectral in action.
⚙️ Integrations
🏁 Help Others Utilize Spectral
If you're using Spectral for an interesting use case, contact us for a case study. We'll add it to a list here. Spread the goodness 🎉
👏 Contributing
If you are interested in contributing to Spectral, check out CONTRIBUTING.md.
🎉 Thanks
📜 License
Spectral is 100% free and open-source, under Apache License 2.0.
🌲 Sponsor Spectral by Planting a Tree
If you would like to thank us for creating Spectral, we ask that you buy the world a tree.
