GraphQLDocs

Ruby library and CLI for easily generating beautiful documentation from your GraphQL schema.

Installation

Add the gem to your project with this command:

bundle add graphql-docs

Or install it yourself as:

gem install graphql-docs

Usage

GraphQLDocs can be used as a Ruby library to build the documentation website. Using it as a Ruby library allows for more control and using every supported option. Here’s an example:

# pass in a filename
GraphQLDocs.build(filename: filename)

# or pass in a string
GraphQLDocs.build(schema: contents)

# or a schema class
schema = GraphQL::Schema.define do
  query query_type
end
GraphQLDocs.build(schema: schema)

GraphQLDocs also has a simplified CLI (graphql-docs) that gets installed with the gem:

graphql-docs schema.graphql

That will generate the output in the output dir.

See all of the supported CLI options with:

graphql-docs -h

Breakdown

There are several phases going on the single GraphQLDocs.build call:

• The GraphQL IDL file is read (if you passed filename) through GraphQL::Client (or simply read if you passed a string through schema).
• GraphQL::Parser manipulates the IDL into a slightly saner format.
• GraphQL::Generator takes that saner format and begins the process of applying items to the HTML templates.
• GraphQL::Renderer technically runs as part of the generation phase. It passes the contents of each page and converts it into HTML.

If you wanted to, you could break these calls up individually. For example:

options = {}
options[:filename] = "#{File.dirname(__FILE__)}/../data/graphql/schema.idl"
options[:renderer] = MySuperCoolRenderer

options = GraphQLDocs::Configuration::GRAPHQLDOCS_DEFAULTS.merge(options)

response = File.read(options[:filename])

parser = GraphQLDocs::Parser.new(response, options)
parsed_schema = parser.parse

generator = GraphQLDocs::Generator.new(parsed_schema, options)

generator.generate

Generating output

By default, the HTML generation process uses ERB to layout the content. There are a bunch of default options provided for you, but feel free to override any of these. The Configuration section below has more information on what you can change.

It also uses html-pipeline to perform the rendering by default. You can override this by providing a custom rendering class.You must implement two methods:

• initialize - Takes two arguments, the parsed schema and the configuration options.
• render Takes the contents of a template page. It also takes two optional kwargs, the GraphQL type and its name. For example:

class CustomRenderer
  def initialize(parsed_schema, options)
    @parsed_schema = parsed_schema
    @options = options
  end

  def render(contents, type: nil, name: nil)
    contents.sub(/Repository/i, '<strong>Meow Woof!</strong>')

    opts[:content] = contents
    @graphql_default_layout.result(OpenStruct.new(opts).instance_eval { binding })
  end
end

options[:filename] = 'location/to/sw-api.graphql'
options[:renderer] = CustomRenderer

GraphQLDocs.build(options)

If your render method returns nil, the Generator will not attempt to write any HTML file.

Templates

The layouts for the individual GraphQL pages are ERB templates, but you can also use ERB templates for your static landing pages.

If you want to add additional variables for your landing pages, you can add define a variables hash within the landing_pages option.

Helper methods

In your ERB layouts, there are several helper methods you can use. The helper methods are:

• slugify(str) - This slugifies the given string.
• include(filename, opts) - This embeds a template from your includes folder, passing along the local options provided.
• markdownify(string) - This converts a string into HTML via CommonMarker.
• graphql_operation_types, graphql_mutation_types, graphql_object_types, graphql_interface_types, graphql_enum_types, graphql_union_types, graphql_input_object_types, graphql_scalar_types, graphql_directive_types - Collections of the various GraphQL types.

To call these methods within templates, you must use the dot notation, such as <%= slugify.(text) %>.

Configuration

The following options are available:

Option	Description	Default
filename	The location of your schema’s IDL file.	nil
schema	A string representing a schema IDL file.	nil
output_dir	The location of the output HTML.	./output/
use_default_styles	Indicates if you want to use the default styles.	true
base_url	Indicates the base URL to prepend for assets and links.	""
delete_output	Deletes output_dir before generating content.	false
pipeline_config	Defines two sub-keys, pipeline and context, which are used by html-pipeline when rendering your output.	pipeline has ExtendedMarkdownFilter, EmojiFilter, and TableOfContentsFilter. context has gfm: false and asset_root set to GitHub’s CDN.
renderer	The rendering class to use.	GraphQLDocs::Renderer
templates	The templates to use when generating HTML. You may override any of the following keys: default, includes, operations, objects, mutations, interfaces, enums, unions, input_objects, scalars, directives.	The defaults are found in lib/graphql-docs/layouts/.
landing_pages	The landing page to use when generating HTML for each type. You may override any of the following keys: index, query, object, mutation, interface, enum, union, input_object, scalar, directive.	The defaults are found in lib/graphql-docs/landing_pages/.
classes	Additional class names you can provide to certain elements.	The full list is available in lib/graphql-docs/configuration.rb.
notices	A proc used to add notices to schema members. See Customizing Notices section below.	nil

Customizing Notices

A notice is a block of CommonMark text that optionally has a title which is displayed above a schema member’s description. The
look of a notice block can be controlled by specifying a custom class for it and then styled via CSS.

The notices option allows you to customize the notices that appear for a specific schema member using a proc.

The proc will be called for each schema member and needs to return an array of notices or an empty array if there are none.

A notice has the following options:

Option	Description
body	CommonMark body of the notice
title	Optional title of the notice
class	Optional CSS class for the wrapper <div> of the notice
title_class	Optional CSS class for the <span> of the notice’s title

Example of a notices proc that adds a notice to the TeamDiscussion type:

options[:notices] = ->(schema_member_path) {
  notices = []

  if schema_member_path == "TeamDiscussion"
    notices << {
      class: "preview-notice",
      body: "Available via the [Team Discussion](/previews/team-discussion) preview.",
    }
  end

  notices
}

The format of schema_member_path is a dot delimited path to the schema member. For example:

"Author", # an object
"ExtraInfo" # an interface,
"Author.socialSecurityNumber" # a field
"Book.author.includeMiddleInitial" # an argument
"Likeable" # a union,
"Cover" # an enum
"Cover.DIGITAL" # an enum value
"BookOrder" # an input object
"Mutation.addLike" # a mutation

Supported Ruby Versions

The gem officially supports Ruby 3.1 and newer.

Any dropping of Ruby version support is considered a breaking change and means a major release for the gem.

Upgrading

This project aims to strictly follow Semantic Versioning.
Minor and patch level updates can be done with pretty high confidence that your usage won’t break.

Review the
Changelog
for detailed changes for each release. The intent is to make upgrading as
painless as possible.

Roadmap

Upcoming work for the project is organized publicly via GitHub
Projects.

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run
bin/rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for
an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

Releasing a new version of the gem

1. Update CHANGELOG.md
2. Bump the version in lib/graphql-docs/version.rb
3. Make a commit and tag it with git commit -a vX.X.X
4. Push the commit and tags to GitHub: git push origin main && git push --tags
5. Build the gem: gem build
6. Push the gem to RubyGems.org: gem push graphql-docs-X.X.X.gem

Sample Site

Clone this repository and run:

bin/rake sample:generate

to see some sample output in the output dir.

Boot up a server to view it:

bin/rake sample:serve

Credits

Originally built by gjtorikian. Actively maintained by brettchalupa.