# Serving the schema

## `get_schema_view` and the `SchemaView` class

The `get_schema_view()` function and the `SchemaView` class it returns (click links for documentation) are intended to cover the majority of use cases one might want to configure. The class returned by `get_schema_view()` can be used to obtain view instances via `SchemaView.with_ui()`, `SchemaView.without_ui()` and `SchemaView.as_cached_view()` - see 1. Quickstart in the README for a usage example.

You can also subclass `SchemaView` by extending the return value of `get_schema_view()`, e.g.:

    SchemaView = get_schema_view(info, ...)

    class CustomSchemaView(SchemaView):
        generator_class = CustomSchemaGenerator
        renderer_classes = (CustomRenderer1, CustomRenderer2,)

## Renderers and codecs

If you need to modify how your Swagger spec is presented in views, you might want to override one of the renderers in `renderers` or one of the codecs in `codecs`. The codec is the last stage where the Swagger object arrives before being transformed into bytes, while the renderer is the stage responsible for tying together the codec and the view.

You can use your custom renderer classes as kwargs to `SchemaView.as_cached_view()` or by subclassing `SchemaView`.

## Management command

If you only need a swagger spec file in YAML or JSON format, you can use the `generate_swagger` management command to get it without having to start the web server:

    $ python manage.py generate_swagger swagger.json

See the command help for more advanced options:

    $ python manage.py generate_swagger --help
    usage: manage.py generate_swagger [-h] [--version] [-v {0,1,2,3}]
       ... more options ...

Note

The DEFAULT_INFO setting must be defined when using the `generate_swagger` command. For example, the README quickstart code could be modified as such:

In `settings.py`:

    SWAGGER_SETTINGS = {
       'DEFAULT_INFO': 'import.path.to.urls.api_info',
    }

In `urls.py`:

    api_info = openapi.Info(
       title="Snippets API",
       ... other arguments ...
    )

    schema_view = get_schema_view(
       # the info argument is no longer needed here as it will be picked up from DEFAULT_INFO
       ... other arguments ...
    )