# Display schemas separately from operations

## Question

> One concern that our users have is that they are missing a "data dictionary" for our API objects.
For example, in our old API reference documentation, we have a section that I can link to that provides the values and descriptions for an object.
Is there a way to configure Redocly to present object value/definition information more directly? I know I can browse down into the body parameter and response definitions for each endpoint.


## Context

The "data dictionary" refers to schemas in OpenAPI.

People have asked about this feature fairly often over the years.
The implementation in our product is [quite raw](https://github.com/Redocly/redoc/commit/9bf45d810e145b5867e54d63bf8ce38821c0fa9b) and dates back a few years.
It's hard to use and tedious if you want to display multiple schemas or organize them neatly.


```html
<SchemaDefinition schemaRef="#/components/schemas/Planet" />
```

This could be added to any tag or info description and the corresponding schema would display.
This is fine if you want to render one schema in a one-off way.
However, this approach isn't good if you want to display your entire data dictionary.

So how could Redocly improve this further?

## Answer

Two divergent approaches seemed valuable to implement:

- Display all of the schemas in a sidebar group.
- Display schemas grouped with their operations (like how Stripe does it).


### All schemas grouped together

Use the feature `schemaDefinitionsTagName` to group all of the schemas together.
They display with a tag name that appears in the sidebar.

This is a configuration setting to place into your Redocly configuration file:

**`redocly.yaml`**


```yaml
theme:
  openapi:
    schemaDefinitionsTagName: Schemas
```

![all schemas together](/assets/x-tags-3.0013e727d016d3956ab09c5b15fd64d2a398c00f3e62a37ec92618ddd8d2da8f.8dd5d84c.png)

### Schemas grouped with operations

Use [`x-tags` specification extension](/docs-legacy/api-reference-docs/specification-extensions/x-tags) to tag specific schemas with the tag names that should appear in the sidebar.
You can have a single schema appear multiple times.


```yaml
compomnents:
  schemas:
    Ingredient:
      x-tags:
        - Listing ingredients
        - Adding ingredients
```

![schema with operations](/assets/x-tags-1.023998f67f1aa31b816be5a892ebc86ff0dfd134dbaf4926cbc49933f8407dd8.8dd5d84c.png)

![schema grouped with operations](/assets/x-tags-2.63a6210c812d08bf6ab5496543551f4a28425a803b87d25ecc3c4cae22098b8e.8dd5d84c.png)

It's important to note that these features shipped in the Developer portal 1.1.0-beta.95. If you're using a prior version, update it to take advantage of this feature.

## Conclusion

Schemas don't need to be displayed outside of operations' request or response descriptions very often.
In case they do, Redocly offers two main options for that:

- display all of the schemas together using `schemaDefinitionsTagName`; or
- tag specific schemas to display alongside operations with `x-tags`.


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