Documenting your API is as important as having a functional API. To help make the documenting process easier this package allows you to annotate your API controllers and then generate documentation using the Artisan command line utility.
To generate documentation you can use the api:docs command. The command has two required arguments, the name of the documentation and the version to generate.
For usage details see the Commands section.
Controllers can generally be represented as a resource. Resources may contain a number of actions which are represented by HTTP verbs.
To define a resource we can use the @Resource annotation.
/**
* @Resource("Users")
*/
class UserController extends Controller
{
}The first parameter given to the resource is its identifier or the name of the resource. We can also give a base URI to the resource.
/**
* @Resource("Users", uri="/users")
*/
class UserController extends Controller
{
}You can also provide a description of your resource prior to the annotation.
/**
* User resource representation.
*
* @Resource("Users", uri="/users")
*/
class UserController extends Controller
{
}An action is represented by a routable method on your controller.
You can describe your action with the short and long descriptions of a PHPDoc.
/**
* Show all users
*
* Get a JSON representation of all the registered users.
*/
public function index()
{
}Each action is represented by an HTTP verb. You must provide a URI as the first parameter to the annotation.
/**
* Show all users
*
* Get a JSON representation of all the registered users.
*
* @Get("/")
*/
public function index()
{
}An action may be available across multiple API versions. When generating documentation this annnotation is used to determine what actions will be included once generated.
/**
* Show all users
*
* Get a JSON representation of all the registered users.
*
* @Get("/")
* @Versions({"v1"})
*/
public function index()
{
}An action should define a request that can be executed that will result in a successful or unsuccessful response.
A request should contain a body. Depending on the type of request the body will vary. For POST requests you can use a string, however you will also need to set the content type.
/**
* Register user
*
* Register a new user with a `username` and `password`.
*
* @Post("/")
* @Versions({"v1"})
* @Request("username=foo&password=bar", contentType="application/x-www-form-urlencoded")
*/
public function store()
{
}If you're sending JSON you can use an annotation array and it will automatically be encoded to a JSON string. The content type will default to application/json.
/**
* Register user
*
* Register a new user with a `username` and `password`.
*
* @Post("/")
* @Versions({"v1"})
* @Request({"username": "foo", "password": "bar"})
*/
public function store()
{
}You can also include additional headers.
/**
* Register user
*
* Register a new user with a `username` and `password`.
*
* @Post("/")
* @Versions({"v1"})
* @Request({"username": "foo", "password": "bar"}, headers={"X-Custom": "FooBar"})
*/
public function store()
{
}If your action responds differently to multiple requests you must also identify the request.
/**
* Register user
*
* Register a new user with a `username` and `password`.
*
* @Post("/")
* @Versions({"v1"})
* @Request({"username": "foo", "password": "bar"}, identifier="A")
*/
public function store()
{
}An @Request should always be followed by an @Response which defines the status code along with the content type, body, and headers.
Much like a request the response body can be a string (make sure to change the contentType) or an annotation array which will be encoded as JSON.
/**
* Register user
*
* Register a new user with a `username` and `password`.
*
* @Post("/")
* @Versions({"v1"})
* @Request({"username": "foo", "password": "bar"})
* @Response(200, body={"id": 10, "username": "foo"})
*/
public function store()
{
}Like a request you can also include headers.
A transaction lets you define multiple requests and multiple responses for requests. Responses must follow requests however you can define multiple responses for a single request.
/**
* Register user
*
* Register a new user with a `username` and `password`.
*
* @Post("/")
* @Versions({"v1"})
* @Transaction({
* @Request({"username": "foo", "password": "bar"}),
* @Response(200, body={"id": 10, "username": "foo"}),
* @Response(422, body={"error": {"username": {"Username is already taken."}}})
* })
*/
public function store()
{
}If your URI contains query string parameters you can define them either at the resource level or the action level. If a parameter is defined at the resource level you will need to either define it for each action or on the resource.
/**
* Show all users
*
* Get a JSON representation of all the registered users.
*
* @Get("/{?page,limit}")
* @Versions({"v1"})
* @Parameters({
* @Parameter("page", description="The page of results to view.", default=1),
* @Parameter("limit", description="The amount of results per page.", default=10)
* })
*/
public function index()
{
}You can also define the parameters type and whether or not it's required.
/**
* @Parameters({
* @Parameter("example", type="integer", required=true description="This is an example.", default=1)
* })
*/
public function index()
{
}