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Utoipa

Simple, Fast, Code first and Compile time generated OpenAPI documentation for Rust

From juhaku·Updated June 13, 2026·View on GitHub·

Pronounced **_/u:ˈtoʊ:i.pɑ/_** or **_/u:ˈtoʊˌaɪ.piˈeɪ/_** whatever works better for you. The project is written primarily in Rust, distributed under the Apache License 2.0 license, first published in 2021. It has gained significant community traction with 3,883 stars and 348 forks on GitHub. Key topics include: auto-generated, compile-time, documentation, generated, openapi.

Latest release: utoipa-gen-5.5.0

utoipa - Auto-generated OpenAPI documentation

Utoipa build
crates.io
docs.rs
MSRV

Pronounced /u:ˈtoʊ:i.pɑ/ or /u:ˈtoʊˌaɪ.piˈeɪ/ whatever works better for you.

Want to have your API documented with OpenAPI? But don't want to be bothered
with manual YAML or JSON tweaking? Would like it to be so easy that it would almost
be utopic? Don't worry: utoipa is here to fill this gap. It aims to do, if not all, then
most of the heavy lifting for you, enabling you to focus on writing the actual API logic instead of
documentation. It aims to be minimal, simple and fast. It uses simple proc macros which
you can use to annotate your code to have items documented.

The utoipa crate provides auto-generated OpenAPI documentation for Rust REST APIs. It treats
code-first approach as a first class citizen and simplifies API documentation by providing
simple macros for generating the documentation from your code.

It also contains Rust types of the OpenAPI spec, allowing you to write the OpenAPI spec only using
Rust if auto generation is not your flavor or does not fit your purpose.

Long term goal of the library is to be the place to go when OpenAPI documentation is needed in any Rust
codebase.

Utoipa is framework-agnostic, and could be used together with any web framework, or even without one. While
being portable and standalone, one of its key aspects is simple integration with web frameworks.

Choose your flavor and document your API with ice-cold IPA

FlavorSupport
actix-webParse path, path parameters and query parameters, recognize request body and response body, utoipa-actix-web bindings. See more at docs
axumParse path and query parameters, recognize request body and response body, utoipa-axum bindings. See more at docs
rocketParse path, path parameters and query parameters, recognize request body and response body. See more at docs
Others*Plain utoipa without extra flavor. This gives you all the basic benefits listed below in Features section but with little less automation.

Others* = For example warp but could be anything.

Refer to the existing examples to find out more.

Features

  • OpenAPI 3.1
  • Pluggable, easy setup and integration with frameworks.
  • No bloat, enable what you need.
  • Support for generic types
    • Note!<br>
      Tuples, arrays and slices cannot be used as generic arguments on types. Types implementing ToSchema manually should not have generic arguments, as
      they are not composeable and will result compile error.
  • Automatic schema collection from usages recursively.
    • Request body from either handler function arguments (if supported by framework) or from request_body attribute.
    • Response body from response body attribute or response content attribute.
  • Various OpenAPI visualization tools supported out of the box.
  • Rust type aliases via utoipa-config.

What's up with the word play?

The name comes from the words utopic and api where uto are the first three letters of utopic
and the ipa is api reversed. Aaand... ipa is also an awesome type of beer :beer:.

Crate Features

  • macros Enable utoipa-gen macros. This is enabled by default.
  • yaml: Enables serde_norway serialization of OpenAPI objects.
  • yaml_serde: Enables serde_yaml serialization of OpenAPI objects.
  • actix_extras: Enhances actix-web integration with being able to
    parse path, path and query parameters from actix web path attribute macros. See
    docs or examples for more details.
  • rocket_extras: Enhances rocket framework integration with being
    able to parse path, path and query parameters from rocket path attribute macros. See docs
    or examples for more details.
  • axum_extras: Enhances axum framework integration allowing users to use IntoParams without
    defining the parameter_in attribute. See docs
    or examples for more details.
  • debug: Add extra traits such as debug traits to openapi definitions and elsewhere.
  • chrono: Add support for chrono DateTime, Date, NaiveDate, NaiveDateTime, NaiveTime and Duration
    types. By default these types are parsed to string types with additional format information.
    format: date-time for DateTime and NaiveDateTime and format: date for Date and NaiveDate according
    RFC3339 as ISO-8601. To
    override default string representation users have to use value_type attribute to override the type.
    See docs for more details.
  • time: Add support for time OffsetDateTime, PrimitiveDateTime, Date, and Duration types.
    By default these types are parsed as string. OffsetDateTime and PrimitiveDateTime will use date-time format. Date will use
    date format and Duration will not have any format. To override default string representation users have to use value_type attribute
    to override the type. See docs for more details.
  • jiff_0_2 Add support for jiff 0.2 Timestamp, Zoned, and civil::Date types.
    By default these types are parsed as string. Timestamp and Zoned will use date-time format. civil::Date will use
    date format. To override default string representation users have to use value_type attribute
    to override the type. See docs for more details.
  • decimal: Add support for rust_decimal Decimal type. By default
    it is interpreted as String. If you wish to change the format you need to override the type.
    See the value_type in component derive docs.
  • decimal_float: Add support for rust_decimal Decimal type. By default
    it is interpreted as Number. This feature is mutually exclusive with decimal and allow to change the default type used in your
    documentation for Decimal much like serde_with_float feature exposed by rust_decimal.
  • uuid: Add support for uuid. Uuid type will be presented as String with
    format uuid in OpenAPI spec.
  • ulid: Add support for ulid. Ulid type will be presented as String with
    format ulid in OpenAPI spec.
  • url: Add support for url. Url type will be presented as String with
    format uri in OpenAPI spec.
  • smallvec: Add support for smallvec. SmallVec will be treated as Vec.
  • openapi_extensions: Adds traits and functions that provide extra convenience functions.
    See the request_body docs for an example.
  • repr: Add support for repr_serde's repr(u*) and repr(i*) attributes to unit type enums for
    C-like enum representation. See docs for more details.
  • preserve_order: Preserve order of properties when serializing the schema for a component.
    When enabled, the properties are listed in order of fields in the corresponding struct definition.
    When disabled, the properties are listed in alphabetical order.
  • preserve_path_order: Preserve order of OpenAPI Paths according to order they have been
    introduced to the #[openapi(paths(...))] macro attribute. If disabled the paths will be
    ordered in alphabetical order. However the operations order under the path will be always constant according to specification
  • indexmap: Add support for indexmap. When enabled IndexMap will be rendered as a map similar to
    BTreeMap and HashMap.
  • non_strict_integers: Add support for non-standard integer formats int8, int16, uint8, uint16, uint32, and uint64.
  • rc_schema: Add ToSchema support for Arc<T> and Rc<T> types. Note! serde rc feature flag must be enabled separately to allow
    serialization and deserialization of Arc<T> and Rc<T> types. See more about serde feature flags.
  • config Enables utoipa-config for the project which allows defining global configuration options for utoipa.

Default Library Support

  • Implicit partial support for serde attributes. See docs for more details.
  • Support for http StatusCode in responses.

Install

Add dependency declaration to Cargo.toml.

toml
[dependencies] utoipa = "5"

Examples

Create type with ToSchema and use it in #[utoipa::path(...)] that is registered to the OpenApi.

rust
use utoipa::{OpenApi, ToSchema}; #[derive(ToSchema)] struct Pet { id: u64, name: String, age: Option<i32>, } mod pet_api { /// Get pet by id /// /// Get pet from database by pet id #[utoipa::path( get, path = "/pets/{id}", responses( (status = 200, description = "Pet found successfully", body = Pet), (status = NOT_FOUND, description = "Pet was not found") ), params( ("id" = u64, Path, description = "Pet database id to get Pet for"), ) )] async fn get_pet_by_id(pet_id: u64) -> Result<Pet, NotFound> { Ok(Pet { id: pet_id, age: None, name: "lightning".to_string(), }) } } #[derive(OpenApi)] #[openapi(paths(pet_api::get_pet_by_id))] struct ApiDoc; println!("{}", ApiDoc::openapi().to_pretty_json().unwrap());
<details> <summary><i><b>Above example will produce an OpenAPI doc like this:</b></i></summary>
json
{ "openapi": "3.1.0", "info": { "title": "application name from Cargo.toml", "description": "description from Cargo.toml", "contact": { "name": "author name from Cargo.toml", "email": "author email from Cargo.toml" }, "license": { "name": "license from Cargo.toml" }, "version": "version from Cargo.toml" }, "paths": { "/pets/{id}": { "get": { "tags": [ "pet_api" ], "summary": "Get pet by id", "description": "Get pet from database by pet id", "operationId": "get_pet_by_id", "parameters": [ { "name": "id", "in": "path", "description": "Pet database id to get Pet for", "required": true, "schema": { "type": "integer", "format": "int64", "minimum": 0 } } ], "responses": { "200": { "description": "Pet found successfully", "content": { "application/json": { "schema": { "$ref": "#/components/schemas/Pet" } } } }, "404": { "description": "Pet was not found" } } } } }, "components": { "schemas": { "Pet": { "type": "object", "required": [ "id", "name" ], "properties": { "age": { "type": [ "integer", "null" ], "format": "int32" }, "id": { "type": "integer", "format": "int64", "minimum": 0 }, "name": { "type": "string" } } } } } }
</details>

Modify OpenAPI at runtime

You can modify generated OpenAPI at runtime either via generated types directly or using
Modify trait.

Modify generated OpenAPI via types directly.

rust
#[derive(OpenApi)] #[openapi( info(description = "My Api description"), )] struct ApiDoc; let mut doc = ApiDoc::openapi(); doc.info.title = String::from("My Api");

You can even convert the generated OpenApi to OpenApiBuilder.

rust
let builder: OpenApiBuilder = ApiDoc::openapi().into();

See Modify trait for examples on how to modify generated OpenAPI via it.

Go beyond the surface

FAQ

Swagger UI returns 404 NotFound from built binary

This is highly probably due to RustEmbed not embedding the Swagger UI to the executable. This is natural since the RustEmbed
library does not by default embed files on debug builds. To get around this you can do one of the following.

  1. Build your executable in --release mode
  2. or add debug-embed feature flag to your Cargo.toml for utoipa-swagger-ui. This will enable the debug-emebed feature flag for
    RustEmbed as well. Read more about this here and here.

Find utoipa-swagger-ui feature flags here.

How to implement ToSchema for external type?

There are few ways around this that are elaborated here in detail.

Auto discover for OpenAPI schemas and paths?

Currently there is no build in solution to automatically discover the OpenAPI types but for your luck there is a pretty neat crate that
just does this for you called utoipauto.

License

Licensed under either of Apache 2.0 or MIT license at your option.

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in this crate
by you, shall be dual licensed, without any additional terms or conditions.

Contributors

Showing top 12 contributors by commit count.

View all contributors on GitHub →

This article is auto-generated from juhaku/utoipa via the GitHub API.Last fetched: 6/14/2026