📖 2 min read (~ 400 words).

go-openapi runtime

github.com/go-openapi/runtime is a runtime library used to work with OpenAPI.

At this moment, it only supports OpenAPI v2 (aka Swagger).

It is used by clients and servers generated with go-swagger. or directly by applications that build untyped OpenAPI / Swagger clients or servers.

It ships:

  • a configurable HTTP client transport (client.Runtime) — TLS, proxy, timeouts, OpenTelemetry tracing, pluggable authentication
  • a server middleware pipeline that turns an analyzed OpenAPI spec into a working http.Handler — routing, security, parameter binding, validation and operation execution
  • a dependency-free server-middleware module with media-type processing, content negotiation and doc-UI helpers, usable from any plain net/http server

Status

Fork me Stable API. Actively maintained.

Getting started

go get github.com/go-openapi/runtime

Using only the dependency-free middleware (media types, negotiation, doc UIs):

go get github.com/go-openapi/runtime/server-middleware

Where to go next

  • Features
    Features supported by our client and server, with normative references. → usage/features
  • Core

    The five interfaces (Consumer, Producer, Authenticator, Authorizer, OperationHandler) every other piece is built on, plus content-type and validation plumbing.

    → usage/core

  • Client

    Configuring client.Runtime for TLS, auth, OpenTelemetry tracing and context-aware request submission.

    → usage/client

  • Server

    The Router → Binder → Validator → Security → OperationExecutor → Responder pipeline that turns a spec into a handler.

    → usage/server

  • Standalone

    Use the media-type, content-negotiation and doc-UI helpers from any plain net/http server, with no transitive OpenAPI dependencies.

    → usage/standalone

Looking for runnable code? See examples.

Licensing

SPDX-FileCopyrightText: Copyright 2025 go-swagger maintainers

This library ships under the Apache-2.0 license.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests welcome.

See the shared go-openapi contributing guidelines and the per-repo notes in project/.

  • Guides, references and examples for using github.com/go-openapi/runtime in clients, servers and standalone middleware.
  • Educational deep-dives and FAQs covering both simple and advanced usage of the runtime. Start with the FAQ for quick answers; jump to a topic page for the full algorithm or behaviour reference.
  • Repo-level information for github.com/go-openapi/runtime. Cross-org contributing and maintainer guides live in the shared go-openapi doc-site.