RESTful web service API documentation with Sphinx [closed] - rest

Question

Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
We don’t allow questions seeking recommendations for books, tools, software libraries, and more. You can edit the question so it can be answered with facts and citations.
Closed 5 years ago.
Improve this question
What's the best way to markup methods/URLs for a RESTful webservice using ReST/Sphinx? Is there a default domain that's suitable for marking up URLs with their possible parameters, HTTP methods, headers and body content?
Something along the lines of:
.. rest:method:: GET /api/foo
:param bar: A valid bar
:extension: json or xml
Retrieve foos for the given parameters. E.g.::
GET /api/foo.json?bar=baz
Does something like this already exist or is one of the default extensions usable, or will I have to write one myself?

Answer 1

The Sphinx Contrib project also seems to have an HTTP Domain package for documenting RESTful HTTP APIs. You can find its documentation on the Python packages site. I can't speak to its fitness: I'm only just starting to look into Sphinx, and I have a need to document RESTful APIs as well, and noticed this contributed package.

Answer 2

Since there doesn't appear to be any existing solution, I have implemented a very simple HTTP domain that I can use to mark up API methods:
import re
from docutils import nodes
from sphinx import addnodes
from sphinx.locale import l_, _
from sphinx.domains import Domain, ObjType
from sphinx.directives import ObjectDescription
http_method_sig_re = re.compile(r'^(GET|POST|PUT|DELETE)?\s?(\S+)(.*)$')
class HTTPMethod(ObjectDescription):
def handle_signature(self, sig, signode):
m = http_method_sig_re.match(sig)
if m is None:
raise ValueError
verb, url, query = m.groups()
if verb is None:
verb = 'GET'
signode += addnodes.desc_addname(verb, verb)
signode += addnodes.desc_name(url, url)
if query:
params = query.strip().split()
for param in params:
signode += addnodes.desc_optional(param, param)
return url
class HTTPDomain(Domain):
"""HTTP language domain."""
name = 'http'
label = 'HTTP'
object_types = {
'method': ObjType(l_('method'), 'method')
}
directives = {
'method': HTTPMethod
}
def setup(app):
app.add_domain(HTTPDomain)
It allows me to mark up methods like this and they'll be styled somewhat visually nicely:
.. http:method:: GET /api/foo/bar/:id/:slug
:param id: An id
:param slug: A slug
Retrieve list of foobars matching given id.
This was my first foray into both Sphinx and Python, so this should be considered very rudimentary code. If anybody is interested in fleshing this out, please fork this project on Github!