vacuum - The world's fastest OpenAPI & Swagger linter.

An ultra-super-fast, lightweight OpenAPI linter and quality checking tool, written in golang and inspired by Spectral.

It's also compatible with existing Spectral rulesets.

Install using homebrew tap

brew install daveshanley/vacuum/vacuum

Install using npm

npm i -g @quobix/vacuum

Install using yarn

yarn global add @quobix/vacuum

Install using curl

curl -fsSL https://quobix.com/scripts/install_vacuum.sh | sh

Install using Docker

The image is available at: https://hub.docker.com/r/dshanley/vacuum

docker pull dshanley/vacuum

To run, mount the current working dir to the container and use a relative path to your spec, like so

docker run --rm -v $PWD:/work:ro dshanley/vacuum lint <your-openapi-spec.yaml>

Alternatively, you can pull it from Github packages. To do that, replace dshanley/vacuum with ghcr.io/daveshanley/vacuum in the above commands.

Run with Go

If you have go >= 1.16 installed, you can use go run to build and run it:

go run github.com/daveshanley/vacuum@latest lint <your-openapi-spec.yaml>

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Sponsors

If your company is using vacuum, please considering supporting this project, like our very kind sponsors:

Speakeasy

scalar

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Come chat with us

Need help? Have a question? Want to share your work? Join our discord and come say hi!

Documentation

🔥 New in v0.14+ 🔥 : Engine Speedup.

Speed! We've made some significant improvements to how efficiently large documents are walked Which means vacuum is now faster than ever.

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v0.12+ : Core functions support JSON Path.

Now all core functions return the correct and accurate JSON path for each linting result. Previously this was not possible at all, but with some clever engineering, we have made it happen. It's a small thing, but with huge impact.

This feature has been available on the OpenAPI functions for some time, however core functions were without a comparison. But no more! core functions have joined the party.

A new --no-clip flag is available on the lint command. This prevents message/path truncation.

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v0.11+: Ignore Linting Errors/Violations.

v0.11 introduces the ability to ignore specific linting errors. This is useful for when you want to implement new rules to existing production APIs. In some cases, correcting the lint errors would result in a breaking change.

Having a way to ignore these errors allows you to implement the new rules for new APIs while maintaining backwards compatibility for existing ones.

Learn more about ignoring violations

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v0.10+ : Quality release.

v0.10 is a quality release, with a number of fixes and improvements to rule schemas, function names and more. vacuum now powers The OpenAPI doctor. To enable correct ruleset management and automation a number of functions have been renamed, interfaces have been upgraded and rule functions schemas are now accurate.

This is a breaking change for anyone using vacuum as a library with custom rules.

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v0.9+ : Built in Language Server.

A new command is available language-server. This starts vacuum as an LSP compatible language server. Run vacuum in your favorite IDE and get linting and validation as you type, in realtime.

Will support any LSP compatible editor, like VSCode, Sublime, vim, etc.

Install the VSCode extension Learn more about the language-server command

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v0.8+ : OpenAPI Bundler.

A new command is available bundle will bundle all external references for an OpenAPI file into a single file.

Learn more about the bundle command

A new linting rule is available oas-schema-check will perform type checks and validation on all schemas in your OpenAPI file. It's enabled by default in the recommended ruleset.

oas-schema-check rule docs

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v0.7+ : Hard Mode.

Want to lint your spec with the most strict ruleset possible? Now you can! Use the -z / --hard-mode flag to enable

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v0.6+ : Sharable / distributed rulesets now available.

Want to share / extend / distribute your own rulesets? Now you can!

Learn more about sharable rulesets

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v0.5+ : Multi-file linting now available for the lint command.

Want to lint multiple files at once? Now you can!

vacuum lint file1.json path/to/file2.yaml file3.json 

Want to suck in a ton of files? Use a glob pattern!

vacuum lint some/path/**/*.yaml 

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v0.3+: Custom JavaScript Functions are now available out of the box.

Write custom functions in JavaScript and use them in any ruleset. No need to compile golang code to extend vacuum anymore!

Learn more about building custom JavaScript functions.

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v0.2+: OWASP API rules are now available out of the box.

Learn more about enabling OWASP API rules.

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Quick Start Guide 🚀

See all the documentation at https://quobix.com/vacuum

• Installing vacuum
• About vacuum
• Why should you care?
• Concepts
• FAQ
• CLI Commands
  • lint
  • vacuum report
  • dashboard
  • html-report
  • bundle
  • spectral-report
• Developer API
  • Using The Index
  • RuleResultSet
  • Loading a RuleSet
  • Linting Non-OpenAPI Files
  • Custom Golang Functions
  • Custom JavaScript Functions
• Rules
  • Examples
  • Tags
  • Descriptions
  • Schemas
  • Spec Information
  • Operations & Paths
  • Validation
  • Security
  • OWASP
• Functions
  • Core Functions
  • OpenAPI Functions
  • OWASP Functions
• Understanding RuleSets
  • Sharing RuleSets
  • All Rules
  • No Rules
  • Recommended Rules
  • Custom Rules

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vacuum can suck all the lint of a 5mb OpenAPI spec in milliseconds.

Designed to reliably lint OpenAPI specifications, very, very quickly. Including very large ones. Spectral can be quite slow when used as an API and does not scale for enterprise applications.

vacuum will tell you what is wrong with your spec, why, where and how to fix it.

vacuum will work at scale and is designed as a CLI (with a web or console UI) and a library to be consumed in other applications.

Dashboard

vacuum comes with an interactive dashboard (vacuum dashboard <your-openapi-spec.yaml>) allowing you to explore rules and violations in a console, without having to scroll through thousands of results.

HTML Report

vacuum can generate an easy to navigate and understand HTML report. Like the dashboard you can explore broken rules and violations, but in your browser.

No external dependencies, the HTML report will run completely offline.

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Supports OpenAPI Version 2 (Swagger) and Version 3+

You can use either YAML or JSON, vacuum supports both formats.

Using vacuum with pre-commit

Vacuum can be used with pre-commit.

To do that, add to your .pre-commit-config.yaml:

repos:
  - repo: https://github.com/daveshanley/vacuum
    rev: # a tag or a commit hash from this repo, see https://github.com/daveshanley/vacuum/releases
    hooks:
      - id: vacuum

See the hook definition here for details on what options the hook uses and what files it checks by default.

If no filenames or more than one filename in your repository matches the default files pattern in the hook definition, the pattern needs to be overridden in your config so that it matches exactly one filename to lint at a time. To lint multiple files, specify the hook multiple times with the appropriate overrides.

Build an interactive HTML report

./vacuum html-report <your-openapi-spec.yaml | vacuum-report.json.gz> <report-name.html>

You can replace report-name.html with your own choice of filename. Open the report in your favorite browser and explore the results.

See full linting report

./vacuum lint -d <your-openapi-spec.yaml>

Lint multiple files at once

./vacuum lint -d <spec1.yaml> <spec2.yaml> <spec3.yaml>

Lint multiple files using a glob pattern

./vacuum lint -d some/path/**/*.yaml

See full linting report with inline code snippets

./vacuum lint -d -s <your-openapi-spec.yaml>

See just the linting errors

./vacuum lint -d -e <your-openapi-spec.yaml>

See just a specific category of report

./vacuum lint -d -c schemas <your-openapi-spec.yaml>

The options here are:

• examples
• operations
• information
• descriptions
• schemas
• security
• tags
• validation
• owasp

Generate a Spectral compatible report

If you're already using Spectral JSON reports, and you want to use vacuum instead, use the spectral-report command

./vacuum spectral-report <your-openapi-spec.yaml> <report-output-name.json>

The report file name is optional. The default report output name is vacuum-spectral-report.json

Generate a vacuum report

Vacuum reports are complete snapshots in time of a linting report for a specification. These reports can be 'replayed' back through vacuum. Use the dashboard or the html-report commands to 'replay' the report and explore the results as they were when the report was generated.

./vacuum report -c <your-openapi-spec.yaml> <report-prefix>

The default name of the report will be vacuum-report-MM-DD-YY-HH_MM_SS.json. You can change the prefix by supplying it as the second argument to the report command.

Ideally, you should compress the report using -c. This shrinks down the size significantly. vacuum automatically recognizes a compressed report file and will deal with it automatically when reading.

When using compression, the file name will be vacuum-report-MM-DD-YY-HH_MM_SS.json.gz. vacuum uses gzip internally.

Ignoring specific linting errors

You can ignore specific linting errors by providing an --ignore-file argument to the lint and report commands.

./vacuum lint --ignore-file <path-to-ignore-file.yaml> -d <your-openapi-spec.yaml>

./vacuum report --ignore-file <path-to-ignore-file.yaml> -c <your-openapi-spec.yaml> <report-prefix>

The ignore-file should point to a .yaml file that contains a list of errors to be ignored by vacuum. The structure of the yaml file is as follows:

<rule-id-1>:
  - <json_path_to_error_or_warning_1>
  - <json_path_to_error_or_warning_2>
<rule-id-2>:
  - <json_path_to_error_or_warning_1>
  - <json_path_to_error_or_warning_2>
  ...

Ignoring errors is useful for when you want to implement new rules to existing production APIs. In some cases, correcting the lint errors would result in a breaking change. Having a way to ignore these errors allows you to implement the new rules for new APIs while maintaining backwards compatibility for existing ones.

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Try out the dashboard

This is an early, but working console UI for vacuum. The code isn't great, it needs a lot of clean up, but if you're interested in seeing how things are progressing, it's available.

./vacuum dashboard <your-openapi-spec.yaml | vacuum-report.json.gz>

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Supply your own Spectral compatible ruleset

If you're already using Spectral and you have your own custom ruleset, then you can use it with vacuum!

The lint, dashboard and spectral-report commands all accept a -r or --ruleset flag, defining the path to your ruleset file.

Here are some examples you can try

All rules turned off

./vacuum lint -r rulesets/examples/norules-ruleset.yaml <your-openapi-spec.yaml>

Only recommended rules

./vacuum lint -r rulesets/examples/recommended-ruleset.yaml <your-openapi-spec.yaml>

Enable specific rules only

./vacuum lint -r rulesets/examples/specific-ruleset.yaml <your-openapi-spec.yaml>

Custom rules

./vacuum lint -r rulesets/examples/custom-ruleset.yaml <your-openapi-spec.yaml>

_All rules, all of them!

./vacuum lint -r rulesets/examples/all-ruleset.yaml <your-openapi-spec.yaml>

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Configuration

File

You can configure vacuum using a configuration file named vacuum.conf.yaml

By default, vacuum searches for this file in the following directories

1. Working directory
2. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME
3. ${HOME}/.config

You can also specify a path to a file using the --config flag

Global flags are configured as top level nodes

time: true
base: 'http://example.com'
...

Command specific flags are configured under a node with the commands name

...
lint:
  silent: true
  ...

Environmental variables

You can configure global vacuum flags using environmental variables in the form of: VACUUM_<flag>

If a flag, has a - in it, replace with _

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