scribe/README.md

Laravel API Documentation Generator

Automatically generate your API documentation from your existing Laravel routes. Take a look at the example documentation.

php artisan apidoc:generate

Installation

Note: version 3.x requires PHP 7 and Laravel 5.5 or higher. Version 2.x requires Laravel 5.4.

$ composer require mpociot/laravel-apidoc-generator

Using Laravel < 5.5? Go to your config/app.php and add the service provider:

Mpociot\ApiDoc\ApiDocGeneratorServiceProvider::class,

Then publish the config file by running:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider=Mpociot\ApiDoc\ApiDocGeneratorServiceProvider --tag=config

This will create an apidoc.php file in your config folder.

Usage

Before you can generate your documentation, you'll need to configure a few things in your config/apidoc.php.

output

This is the file path where the generated documentation will be written to. Default: `public/docs

postman

Set this option to true if you want a Postman collection to be generated along with the documentation. Default: `true

router

The router to use when processing the route (can be Laravel or Dingo. Defaults to Laravel)

routes

This is where you specify what rules documentation should be generated for. You specify routes to be parsed by defining conditions that the routes should meet and rules that should be applied when generating documentation. These conditions and rules are specified in groups, allowing you to apply different rules to different routes.

For instance, suppose your configuration looks like this:

<?php
return [
     //...,
  
     'routes' => [
          [
              'match' => [
                  'domains' => ['*'],
                  'prefixes' => ['api/*', 'v2-api/*'],
                  'versions' => ['v1'],
              ],
              'include' => ['users.index'],
              'exclude' => ['users.create'],
              'apply' => [
                  'headers' => [
                      'Authorization' => 'Bearer: {token}',
                  ],
              ],
          ],
];

This means documentation will be generated for routes in all domains ('' is a wildcard meaning 'any character') which match any of the patterns 'api/' or 'v2-api/*', excluding the 'users.create' route, and including the 'users.index' route. (The versions key is ignored unless you are using Dingo router). Also, in the generated documentation, these routes will have the header 'Authorization: Bearer: {token}' added to the example requests.

You can also separate routes into groups to apply different rules to them:

<?php
return [
     //...,
  
     'routes' => [
          [
              'match' => [
                  'domains' => ['v1.*'],
                  'prefixes' => ['*'],
              ],
              'include' => [],
              'exclude' => [],
              'apply' => [
                  'headers' => [
                      'Token' => '{token}',
                      'Version' => 'v1',
                  ],
              ],
          ],
          [
              'match' => [
                  'domains' => ['v2.*'],
                  'prefixes' => ['*'],
              ],
              'include' => [],
              'exclude' => [],
              'apply' => [
                  'headers' => [
                      'Authorization' => 'Bearer: {token}',
                      'Api-Version' => 'v2',
                  ],
              ],
          ],
];

With the configuration above, routes on the v1.* domain will have the Token and Version headers applied, while routes on the v2.* domain will have the Authorization and Api-Version headers applied.

Note: If you're using DIngo router, the versions parameter is required in each route group. This parameter does not support wildcards. Each version must be listed explicitly,

To generate your API documentation, use the apidoc:generate artisan command.

$ php artisan apidoc:generate

It will generate documentation using your specified configuration.

Documenting your API

This package uses these resources to generate the API documentation:

Grouping endpoints

This package uses the HTTP controller doc blocks to create a table of contents and show descriptions for your API methods.

Using @resource in a doc block prior to each controller is useful as it creates a Group within the API documentation for all methods defined in that controller (rather than listing every method in a single list for all your controllers), but using @resource is not required. The short description after the @resource should be unique to allow anchor tags to navigate to this section. A longer description can be included below. Custom formatting and <aside> tags are also supported. (see the Documentarian docs)

Above each method within the controller you wish to include in your API documentation you should have a doc block. This should include a unique short description as the first entry. An optional second entry can be added with further information. Both descriptions will appear in the API documentation in a different format as shown below.

/**
 * @resource Example
 *
 * Longer description
 */
class ExampleController extends Controller {

	/**
	 * This is the short description [and should be unique as anchor tags link to this in navigation menu]
	 *
	 * This can be an optional longer description of your API call, used within the documentation.
	 *
	 */
	 public function foo(){

	 }

Result:

Specifying request body parameters

To specify a list of valid parameters your API route accepts, use the @bodyParam annotation. It takes the name of the parameter, its type, an optional "required" label, and then its description

/**
 * @bodyParam title string required The title of the post.
 * @bodyParam body string required The title of the post.
 * @bodyParam type The type of post to create. Defaults to 'textophonious'.
 * @bodyParam thumbnail image This is required if the post type is 'imagelicious'.
 */
public function createPost()
{
    // ...
}

They will be included in the generated documentation text and example requests.

Result:

Providing an example response

You can provide an example response for a route. This will be disaplyed in the examples section. There are several ways of doing this.

@response

You can provide an example response for a route by using the @response annotation with valid JSON:

/**
 * @response {
 *  "id": 4,
 *  "name": "Jessica Jones",
 *  "roles": ["admin"]
 * }
 */
public function show($id)
{
    return User::find($id);
}

@transformer, @transformerCollection, and @transformerModel

You can define the transformer that is used for the result of the route using the @transformer tag (or @transformerCollection if the route returns a list). The package will attempt to generate an instance of the model to be transformed using the following steps, stopping at the first successful one:

1. Check if there is a @transformerModel tag to define the model being transformed. If there is none, use the class of the first parameter to the method.
2. Get an instance of the model from the Eloquent model factory
3. If the parameter is an Eloquent model, load the first from the database.
4. Create an instance using new.

Finally, it will pass in the model to the transformer and display the result of that as the example response.

For example:

/**
 * @transformer \App\Transformers\UserTransformer
 * @transformerModel \App\User
 */
public function listUsers()
{
    //...
}

/**
 * @transformer \App\Transformers\UserTransformer
 */
public function showUser(User $user)
{
    //...
}

/**
 * @transformer \App\Transformers\UserTransformer
 * @transformerModel \App\User
 */
public function showUser(int $id)
{
    // ...
}

For the first route above, this package will generate a set of two users then pass it through the transformer. For the last two, it will generate a single user and then pass it through the transformer.

Postman collections

The generator automatically creates a Postman collection file, which you can import to use within your Postman app for even simpler API testing and usage.

If you don't want to create a Postman collection, set the --postman config option to false.

The default base URL added to the Postman collection will be that found in your Laravel config/app.php file. This will likely be http://localhost. If you wish to change this setting you can directly update the url or link this config value to your environment file to make it more flexible (as shown below):

'url' => env('APP_URL', 'http://yourappdefault.app'),

If you are referring to the environment setting as shown above, then you should ensure that you have updated your .env file to set the APP_URL value as appropriate. Otherwise the default value (http://yourappdefault.app) will be used in your Postman collection. Example environment value:

APP_URL=http://yourapp.app

Modify the generated documentation

If you want to modify the content of your generated documentation, go ahead and edit the generated index.md file. The default location of this file is: public/docs/source/index.md.

After editing the markdown file, use the apidoc:update command to rebuild your documentation as a static HTML file.

$ php artisan apidoc:update

As an optional parameter, you can use --location to tell the update command where your documentation can be found.

If you wish to regenerate your documentation, you can run the generate command, you can use the force option to force the re-generation of existing/modified API routes.

Automatically add markdown to the beginning or end of the documentation

If you wish to automatically add the same content to the docs every time you generate, you can add a prepend.md and/or append.md file to the source folder, and they will be included above and below the generated documentation.

File locations:

• public/docs/source/prepend.md - Will be added after the front matter and info text
• public/docs/source/append.md - Will be added at the end of the document.

Further modification

This package uses Documentarian to generate the API documentation. If you want to modify the CSS files of your documentation, or simply want to learn more about what is possible, take a look at the Documentarian guide.

License

The Laravel API Documentation Generator is free software licensed under the MIT license.