Autodocumenting with Swagger

View the Sample App

This suite uses DSLs to specify inputs (strong_resources, filters, etc), and outputs (jsonapi-rb serializers). We can introspect that DSL to provide automatic documentation. Not only does this save a lot of time, it ensures your code and documentation are never out of sync.

Here we’ll be using swagger, a popular open-source documentation framework.


To get this UI, we need to install two things: a controller that generates a schema (swagger.json), and a static website in public. Our generator installs these dependencies: 

# Gemfile
# Below 'jsonapi_suite'
gem 'jsonapi_spec_helpers'
gem 'jsonapi_swagger_helpers'

Note: here we’re moving jsonapi_spec_helpers out of the test-specific bundle group. Introspecting spec helpers is part of autodocumenting, so we’ll require them manually when our documentation controller is loaded.

The generator also installs a Swagger UI in your Rails app’s public directory. If you haven’t already done so:

$ mkdir -p public/api/docs && cd public/api/docs
$ git clone https://github.com/jsonapi-suite/swagger-ui.git && cp swagger-ui/prod-dist/* . && rm -rf swagger-ui

Our documentation will be accessible at /api/docs, so we put the files in public/api/docs. You may want a different directory depending on your own routing rules. In either case, our next step is to edit index.html: make sure any javascript and css has the correct URL. There are also a few configuration options, such as providing a link to Github.

window.CONFIG = {
  githubURL: "http://github.com/user/repo",
  basePath: "/api" // basePath/swagger.json, basePath/v1/employees, etc
}

This static website will make a request to /api/swagger.json. Again, if not using the generator you’ll have to add that endpoint:

$ touch app/controllers/docs_controller.rb
# config/routes.rb
scope path: '/api' do
  resources :docs, only: [:index], path: '/swagger'
  # ... code ...
end

Our DocsController uses swagger-blocks to generate the swagger schema. Here’s the minimal setup needed to configure swagger:

require 'jsonapi_swagger_helpers'

class DocsController < ActionController::API
  include JsonapiSwaggerHelpers::DocsControllerMixin

  swagger_root do
    key :swagger, '2.0'
    info do
      key :version, '1.0.0'
      key :title, '<YOUR APP NAME>'
      key :description, '<YOUR APP DESCRIPTION>'
      contact do
      key :name, '<YOU>'
      end
    end
    key :basePath, '/api'
    key :consumes, ['application/json']
    key :produces, ['application/json']
  end
end

That’s it. Now, every time we add an endpoint, we can autodocument with one line of code (below the swagger_root block):

jsonapi_resource '/v1/employees'

This endpoint will be introspected for all RESTful actions, outputting the full configuration. There are a few customization options:

jsonapi_resource '/v1/employees',
  only: [:create, :index],
  except: [:destroy],
  descriptions: {
    index: "Some <b>additional</b> documentation"
  }

If you want additional attribute-level documentation, you can add this to your spec payloads:

key(:name, String, description: 'The full name, e.g. "John Doe"')


Will give you an output similar to:


Authentication

Your site may require authentication - for instance, sending a Authorization header in every request. We suggest using something like Request.ly to modify headers for every request to a given URL.

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