Enlighten your APIs with auto-generated documentation
Enlighten for Laravel
A seamless package to document your Laravel APIs.
There is no need to add endless docblocks to each API method, maintain dozens of readme files, or write extensive wikis to keep your APIs documented and in sync with your codebase!
Enlighten your Laravel applications with a beautiful documentation generated automatically from your test suites, by doing so, your documentation will always be updated with the current version of your app.
If you have already invested a lot of time developing and testing your API you don’t need to spend the same amount of time documenting it, we’ll do that for you, you deserve it!
Compatibility
Enlighten is compatible with Laravel 7.28 onwards and requires PHP from version 7.3.
You can be a part of this project:
Introducing Laravel Enlighten
After installing the component, run php artisan enlighten and that’s it! You’ll find the entire API documentation in the following URL: /enlighten/
Usage
After finishing the installation process, run your Laravel tests with the following command:
php artisan enlighten
You can pass any option you’d normally pass to php artisan test including the --parallel option available in Laravel 8 onwards!
Now visit /enlighten/ to navigate the documentation.
Run php artisan enlighten:export to export the documentation as static files!
Demo project
Follow our 3min installation guide to see Enlighten in action in your own app (you don’t need to modify your tests!)
Alternatively, install our demo project following the instructions in its README.
Installation
Installing Enlighten requires only 3 steps!
Step 1: Composer Require
Require the package with Composer as a dev dependency:
composer require styde/enlighten --dev
If you are NOT using the Laravel package auto-discovery feature, please add the following service-provider to config/app.php
[
'providers' => [
// ...
Styde\Enlighten\Providers\EnlightenServiceProvider::class,
]
];
Step 2: Install Enlighten
Run php artisan enlighten:install to install and setup Enlighten automatically, otherwise follow the instructions in the Manual Setup Section.
Step 3: Database Setup
Create and configure a database for Enlighten following the instructions below:
Enlighten needs its own database and database connection to record and preserve the documentation generated from your test suites.
If you use the following convention:
- A non-sqlite default database for your local enviroment (i.e.
my_db) - A non-sqlite database for your test enviroment with the
_testor_testssuffix (i.e.my_db_tests)
Just add a new database using the same name of your default database with the _enlighten suffix, for example:
# .env
# If your local database is:
DB_NAME=my_default_database
#
# phpunit.xml
# And your test database is:
# <env name="DB_DATABASE" value="my_default_database_tests"/>
#
# Then Enlighten will use a third database automatically:
# my_default_database_enlighten
If you’re not following the convention above, just add a new connection entry in config/database.php with the name enlighten and your custom configuration:
'enlighten' => [
'driver' => 'mysql',
'host' => env('DB_HOST', '127.0.0.1'),
'port' => env('DB_PORT', '3306'),
'database' => 'my_enlighten_database',
// ...
],
It’s important to have a different connection and a different database for Enlighten in order to avoid having the info deleted or not persisted when
using any of the database migration traits included by Laravel or if you run the tests using SQLite.
Use php artisan enlighten:migrate to run the package migrations.
You can also use: php artisan enlighten:migrate:fresh to refresh the migrations. Warning: this will also delete the auto generated documentation!
Manual Setup
If you didn’t run php artisan enlighten:install or you received an error message, you can setup Enlighten manually following these instructions:
Publish the package assets (CSS, JavaScript) to the public folder using Artisan:
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=enlighten-build
Optionally, you can publish the config file and views for more customization.
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=enlighten-config
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=enlighten-views
Third step: import the trait Styde\Enlighten\Tests\EnlightenSetup and call $this->setUpEnlighten() in the setUp method of your TestCase, for example:
<?php
namespace Tests;
use Styde\Enlighten\Tests\EnlightenSetup;
class TestCase extends \Tests\TestCase
{
use EnlightenSetup;
protected function setUp(): void
{
parent::setUp();
$this->setUpEnlighten();
}
}
Note: remember to include and use the trait Styde\Enlighten\Tests\EnlightenSetup.
Optional configuration
To “group” your tests-classes as “modules”, you can use a regular expression to find all the classes that match with the given pattern or patterns:
// config/enlighten.php
[
'modules' => [
[
'name' => 'Users',
'pattern' => ['*Users*']
],
[
'name' => 'Projects',
'pattern' => ['*Projects*', '*Project*']
],
[
'name' => 'Other Modules',
'pattern' => ['*'],
],
]
];
You can add a “catch all” group at the end to include all those files that didn’t match with any of the other patterns, otherwise Enlighten will do this automatically for you.
Excluding test-classes from the documentation
If you want to include all the test-classes and methods in your documentation, you can skip this step, otherwise, you can add the following key to the /config/enlighten.php file:
[
'tests' => [
// Add expressions to ignore test class names and test method names.
// i.e. Tests\Unit\* ignores all tests in the Tests\Unit\ suite,
// validates_* ignores all tests that start with validates_.
'ignore' => [
'method_that_will_be_ignored',
],
],
];
You can also ignore classes and methods adding the @enlighten {"ignore": true} annotation to any class OR method, for example:
/**
* @enlighten {"ignore": true}
*/
class IgnoreClassWithAnnotationTest extends TestCase
{
use RefreshDatabase;
/**
* @test
* @enlighten {"ignore": true}
*/
function does_not_export_test_methods_with_the_enlighten_ignore_annotation()
{
$this->assertExampleIsNotCreated();
}
}
If you’d like to do the opposite (include a class previously ignored via the configuration option) just add the @enlighten annotation to that class OR method:
/**
* @enlighten
*/
class IncludeMethodWithAnnotationTest extends TestCase
{
/**
* @test
* @enlighten
*/
function export_test_method_with_the_enlighten_annotation_even_if_its_ignored_in_the_config()
{
$this->assertExampleIsCreated();
}
}
Note: the annotations take precedence over the configuration option.
Customizing titles and descriptions
If you want to have more control on the titles of the classes and methods, or add descriptions to each group or example, you can add the following annotations in your test classes and methods:
/**
* @title User Module
*
* or if you prefer:
*
* @testdox User Module
*
* and you can also use:
*
* @description Manage all the user-related petitions.
**/
class UsersTest extends TestCase {
/**
*
* @testdox Create Users
*
* @description Register a new user via POST request. API credentials must be provided.
**/
public function testRegisterNewUsers()
{
$this->assertTrue(true);
}
}
Hiding sections from the view
You can hide entire UI sections from the view via config
// config/enlighten.php
return [
// Add values to this array if you want to hide certain sections from your views.
// For valid sections see \Styde\Enlighten\Section
'hide' => [
//
],
];
Document your Internal API (Classes, Methods and Functions)
You can also create a code-snippet from your unit-tests by using the Enlighten::test() facade, this will allows you to add code-examples to your documentation.
use Styde\Enlighten\Facades\Settings;
class CalcTest extends TestCase
{
/**
* @test
* @testdox Sum two numbers
* @description Use the Calc `sum` static method to sum two numbers.
**/
public function can_sum_two_numbers()
{
$result = Settings::test(function () {
$a = 1;
$b = 2;
return Calc::sum($a, $b);
});
$this->assertSame(3, $result);
}
}
Optionally, you can use the enlighten() helper instead of the Enlighten::test() facade.
Export the documentation as static HTML files
Since v0.4 you can use artisan to generate static files for your documentation:
php artisan enlighten:export
You can select a custom export directory and base URL to use on the static files.
Customizing the intro page
To customize the content of your Dashboard page, you can add an ENLIGHTEN.md markdown file to the root path of your project.
The content of this file will overwrite the default page provided by this package.
Community Links
English
- Enlighten Your APIs With Auto-Generated Documentation (LaravelNews.com)
- Composer 2.0, Enlightened APIs, and Mastering Nova (LaravelNews Podcast)
- Documentation in Laravel 8 with Enlighten (Oliver Earl)
Spanish
German
Credits
License
The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.