NelmioApiDocBundle/Resources/doc/index.md

NelmioApiDocBundle

The NelmioApiDocBundle bundle allows you to generate a decent documentation for your APIs.

Installation

Add this bundle to your composer.json file:

{
    "require": {
        "nelmio/api-doc-bundle": "@stable"
    }
}

Protip: you should browse the nelmio/api-doc-bundle page to choose a stable version to use, avoid the @stable meta constraint.

Register the bundle in app/AppKernel.php:

// app/AppKernel.php
public function registerBundles()
{
    return array(
        // ...
        new Nelmio\ApiDocBundle\NelmioApiDocBundle(),
    );
}

Import the routing definition in routing.yml:

# app/config/routing.yml
NelmioApiDocBundle:
    resource: "@NelmioApiDocBundle/Resources/config/routing.yml"
    prefix:   /api/doc

Enable the bundle's configuration in app/config/config.yml:

# app/config/config.yml
nelmio_api_doc: ~

Usage

The main problem with documentation is to keep it up to date. That's why the NelmioApiDocBundle uses introspection a lot. Thanks to an annotation, it's really easy to document an API method.

The ApiDoc() Annotation

The bundle provides an ApiDoc() annotation for your controllers:

<?php

namespace Your\Namespace;

use Nelmio\ApiDocBundle\Annotation\ApiDoc;

class YourController extends Controller
{
    /**
     * This is the documentation description of your method, it will appear
     * on a specific pane. It will read all the text until the first
     * annotation.
     *
     * @ApiDoc(
     *  resource=true,
     *  description="This is a description of your API method",
     *  filters={
     *      {"name"="a-filter", "dataType"="integer"},
     *      {"name"="another-filter", "dataType"="string", "pattern"="(foo|bar) ASC|DESC"}
     *  }
     * )
     */
    public function getAction()
    {
    }

    /**
     * @ApiDoc(
     *  description="Create a new Object",
     *  input="Your\Namespace\Form\Type\YourType",
     *  output="Your\Namespace\Class"
     * )
     */
    public function postAction()
    {
    }

    /**
     * @ApiDoc(
     *  description="Returns a collection of Object",
     *  requirements={
     *      {
     *          "name"="limit",
     *          "dataType"="integer",
     *          "requirement"="\d+",
     *          "description"="how many objects to return"
     *      }
     *  },
     *  parameters={
     *      {"name"="categoryId", "dataType"="integer", "required"=true, "description"="category id"}
     *  }
     * )
     */
    public function cgetAction($id)
    {
    }
}

The following properties are available:

• section: allow to group resources

• resource: whether the method describes a main resource or not (default: false);

• description: a description of the API method;

• https: whether the method described requires the https protocol (default: false);

• deprecated: allow to set method as deprecated (default: false);

• tags: allow to tag a method (e.g. beta or in-development). Either a single tag or an array of tags.

• filters: an array of filters;

• requirements: an array of requirements;

• parameters: an array of parameters;

• input: the input type associated to the method (currently this supports Form Types, classes with JMS Serializer metadata, and classes with Validation component metadata) useful for POST|PUT methods, either as FQCN or as form type (if it is registered in the form factory in the container).

• output: the output type associated with the response. Specified and parsed the same way as input.

• statusCodes: an array of HTTP status codes and a description of when that status is returned; Example:

<?php

class YourController
{
    /**
     * @ApiDoc(
     *     statusCodes={
     *         200="Returned when successful",
     *         403="Returned when the user is not authorized to say hello",
     *         404={
     *           "Returned when the user is not found",
     *           "Returned when something else is not found"
     *         }
     *     }
     * )
     */
    public function myFunction()
    {
        // ...
    }
}

Each filter has to define a name parameter, but other parameters are free. Filters are often optional parameters, and you can document them as you want, but keep in mind to be consistent for the whole documentation.

If you set input, then the bundle automatically extracts parameters based on the given type, and determines for each parameter its data type, and if it's required or not.

For classes parsed with JMS metadata, description will be taken from the properties doc comment, if available.

For Form Types, you can add an extra option named description on each field:

<?php

class YourType extends AbstractType
{
    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     */
    public function buildForm(FormBuilder $builder, array $options)
    {
        $builder->add('note', null, array(
            'description' => 'this is a note',
        ));

        // ...
    }
}

The bundle will also get information from the routing definition (requirements, pattern, etc), so to get the best out of it you should define strict _method requirements etc.

Other Bundle Annotations

Also bundle will get information from the other annotations:

• @FOS\RestBundle\Controller\Annotations\RequestParam - use as parameters

• @FOS\RestBundle\Controller\Annotations\QueryParam - use as requirements (when strict parameter is true), filters (when strict is false)

• @JMS\SecurityExtraBundle\Annotation\Secure - set authentication to true, authenticationRoles to the given roles

• @Sensio\Bundle\FrameworkExtraBundle\Configuration\Cache - set cache

PHPDoc

Route functions marked as @deprecated will be set method as deprecation in documentation.

JMS Serializer Features

The bundle has support for some of the JMS Serializer features and use these extra information in the generated documentation.

Group Exclusion Strategy

If your classes use JMS Group Exclusion Strategy, you can specify which groups to use when generating the documentation by using this syntax :

input={
    "class"="Acme\Bundle\Entity\User",
    "groups"={"update", "public"}
}

In this case the groups 'update' and 'public' are used.

This feature also works for the output property.

Versioning Objects

If your output classes use versioning capabilities of JMS Serializer, the versioning information will be automatically used when generating the documentation.

Form Types Features

Even if you use FormFactoryInterface::createNamed('', 'your_form_type') the documentation will generate the form type name as the prefix for inputs (your_form_type[param] ... instead of just param).

You can specify which prefix to use with the name key in the input section:

input = {
 "class" = "your_form_type",
 "name" = ""
}

Used Parsers

By default, all registered parsers are used, but sometimes you may want to define which parsers you want to use. The parsers attribute is used to configure a list of parsers that will be used:

output={
    "class"   = "Acme\Bundle\Entity\User",
    "parsers" = {
        "Nelmio\ApiDocBundle\Parser\JmsMetadataParser",
        "Nelmio\ApiDocBundle\Parser\ValidationParser"
    }
}

In this case the parsers JmsMetadataParser and ValidationParser are used to generate returned data.

This feature also works for both the input and output properties.

Web Interface

You can browse the whole documentation at: http://example.org/api/doc.

On-The-Fly Documentation

By calling an URL with the parameter ?_doc=1, you will get the corresponding documentation if available.

Sandbox

This bundle provides a sandbox mode in order to test API methods. You can configure this sandbox using the following parameters:

# app/config/config.yml
nelmio_api_doc:
    sandbox:
        authentication:             # default is `~` (`null`), if set, the sandbox automatically
                                    # send authenticated requests using the configured `delivery`

            name: access_token      # access token name or query parameter name or header name

            delivery: http          # `query`, `http`, and `header` are supported

            # Required if http delivery is selected.
            type:     basic         # `basic`, `bearer` are supported

            custom_endpoint: true   # default is `false`, if `true`, your user will be able to
                                    # specify its own endpoint

        enabled:  true              # default is `true`, you can set this parameter to `false`
                                    # to disable the sandbox

        endpoint: http://sandbox.example.com/   # default is `/app_dev.php`, use this parameter
                                                # to define which URL to call through the sandbox

        accept_type: application/json           # default is `~` (`null`), if set, the value is
                                                # automatically populated as the `Accept` header

        body_format:
            formats: [ form, json ]             # array of enabled body formats,
                                                # remove all elements to disable the selectbox
            default_format: form                # default is `form`, determines whether to send
                                                # `x-www-form-urlencoded` data or json-encoded
                                                # data (by setting this parameter to `json`) in
                                                # sandbox requests

        request_format:
            formats:                            # default is `json` and `xml`,
                json: application/json          # override to add custom formats or disable
                xml: application/xml            # the default formats

            method: format_param    # default is `format_param`, alternately `accept_header`,
                                    # decides how to request the response format

            default_format: json    # default is `json`,
                                    # default content format to request (see formats)

Command

A command is provided in order to dump the documentation in json, markdown, or html.

php app/console api:doc:dump [--format="..."]

The --format option allows to choose the format (default is: markdown).

For example to generate a static version of your documentation you can use:

php app/console api:doc:dump --format=html > api.html

By default, the generated HTML will add the sandbox feature if you didn't disable it in the configuration. If you want to generate a static version of your documentation without sandbox, use the --no-sandbox option.

Configuration In-Depth

You can specify your own API name:

# app/config/config.yml
nelmio_api_doc:
    name: My API

You can choose between different authentication methods:

# app/config/config.yml
nelmio_api_doc:
    authentication:
        delivery: header
        name:     X-Custom

# app/config/config.yml
nelmio_api_doc:
    authentication:
        delivery: query
        name:     param

# app/config/config.yml
nelmio_api_doc:
    authentication:
        delivery: http
        type:     basic # or bearer

When choosing an http delivery, name defaults to Authorization, and the header value will automatically be prefixed by the corresponding type (ie. Basic or Bearer).

You can specify which sections to exclude from the documentation generation:

# app/config/config.yml
nelmio_api_doc:
    exclude_sections: ["privateapi", "testapi"]

The bundle provides a way to register multiple input parsers. The first parser that can handle the specified input is used, so you can configure their priorities via container tags. Here's an example parser service registration:

#app/config/config.yml
services:
    mybundle.api_doc.extractor.custom_parser:
        class: MyBundle\Parser\CustomDocParser
        tags:
            - { name: nelmio_api_doc.extractor.parser, priority: 2 }

You can also define your own motd content (above methods list). All you have to do is add to configuration:

#app/config/config.yml
nelmio_api_doc:
    # ...
    motd:
        template: AcmeApiBundle::Components/motd.html.twig

Using Your Own Annotations

If you have developed your own project-related annotations, and you want to parse them to populate the ApiDoc, you can provide custom handlers as services. You just have to implement the Nelmio\ApiDocBundle\Extractor\HandlerInterface and tag it as nelmio_api_doc.extractor.handler:

# app/config/config.yml
services:
    mybundle.api_doc.extractor.my_annotation_handler:
        class: MyBundle\AnnotationHandler\MyAnnotationHandler
        tags:
            - { name: nelmio_api_doc.extractor.handler }

Look at the built-in Handlers.

Reference Configuration

nelmio_api_doc:
    name:                 'API documentation'
    exclude_sections:     []
    motd:
        template:             'NelmioApiDocBundle::Components/motd.html.twig'
    request_listener:
        enabled:              true
        parameter:            _doc
    sandbox:
        enabled:              true
        endpoint:             null
        accept_type:          null
        body_format:
            formats:

                # Defaults:
                - form
                - json
            default_format:       ~ # One of "form"; "json"
        request_format:
            formats:

                # Defaults:
                json:                application/json
                xml:                 application/xml
            method:               ~ # One of "format_param"; "accept_header"
            default_format:       json
        authentication:
            delivery:             ~ # Required
            name:                 ~ # Required

            # Required if http delivery is selected.
            type:                 ~ # One of "basic"; "bearer"
            custom_endpoint:      false