Configuration

Attention

These docs are for Scribe v2, which is no longer maintained. See scribe.knuckles.wtf/laravel for Scribe v3.

Here’s a rundown of what’s available in the config/scribe.php file.

Tip

If you aren’t sure what an option does, it’s best to leave it set to the default.

Output settings

type

This is the type of documentation output to generate.

  • static will generate a static HTMl page in the public/docs folder, so anyone can visit your documentation page by going to {yourapp.domain}/docs.
  • laravel will generate the documentation as a Blade view within the resources/views/scribe folder, so you can add routing and authentication.

Note

In both instances, the source markdown file will be generated in resources/docs.

static

Settings for the static type output.

  • output_path: Output folder. The HTML documentation, assets and Postman collection will be generated to this folder. Source Markdown will still be in resources/docs. Default: public/docs.

laravel

Settings for the laravel type output.

  • add_routes: Set this to true if you want the documentation endpoint to be automatically set up for you. Of course, you can use your own routing instead, by setting this to false.
  • docs_url: The path for the documentation endpoint (if add_routes is true). Your Postman collection (if you have that enabled) will be at this path + ‘.json’ (eg /docs.json). Default: /docs.
  • middleware: List of middleware to be attached to the documentation endpoint (if add_routes is true).

base_url

The base URL to be used in examples. By default, this will be the value of config('app.url').

intro_text

The text to place in the “Introduction” section. Markdown and HTML are supported.

title

The HTML <title> for the generated documentation, and the name of the generated Postman collection. If this is null, Scribe will infer it from config('app.name').

description

A description for your API. This will be placed in the “Introduction” section, before the intro_text. It will also be used as the info.description field in the generated Postman collection and OpenAPI spec.

interactive

Set this to true if you’d like Scribe to add a “Try It Out” button to your endpoints so users can test them from their browser. Default: true.

..Important:: For “Try It Out” to work, you’ll need to make sure CORS is enabled on your endpoints. An easy package for this is fruitcake/laravel-cors.

default_group

When documenting your api, you use @group annotations to group API endpoints. Endpoints which do not have a group annotation will be grouped under the default_group. Defaults to "Endpoints".

example_languages

For each endpoint, an example request is shown in each of the languages specified in this array. Currently only bash, javascript, php and python are supported. You can add your own language, but you must also define the corresponding Blade view (see Adding more example languages). Default: ["bash", "javascript"]

postman

Along with the HTML docs, Scribe can automatically generate a Postman collection for your routes. This section is where you can configure or disable that.

For static output, the collection will be created in public/docs/collection.json. For laravel output, the collection will be generated to storage/app/scribe/collection.json. Setting laravel.add_routes to true will add a /docs.json endpoint to fetch it.

  • enabled: Whether or not to generate a Postman API collection. Default: true
  • overrides: List of fields to apply to the generated collection. Dot notation is supported. For instance, if you’d like to override the version (in the info object, you can set overrides to ['info.version' => '2.0.0'].

openapi

Scribe can also generate an OpenAPI (Swagger) spec for your routes (disabled by default). This section is where you can configure or enable that.

Important

The OpenAPI spec is an opinionated spec that doesn’t cover all features of APIs in the wild. Scribe does its best, but there’s no guarantee that the spec generated will exactly match your API structure.

For static output, the spec will be created in public/docs/openapi.yaml. For laravel output, the spec will be generated to storage/app/scribe/openapi.yaml. Setting laravel.add_routes to true will add a /docs.openapi endpoint to fetch it.

  • enabled: Whether or not to generate an OpenAPI spec. Default: false
  • overrides: List of fields to apply to the generated spec. Dot notation is supported. For instance, if you’d like to override the version (in the info object, you can set overrides to ['info.version' => '2.0.0'].

Extraction settings

router

The router to use when processing your routes. Can be laravel or dingo. Defaults to laravel.

auth

Authentication information about your API. This information will be used:

  • to derive the text in the “Authentication” section in the generated docs
  • to generate auth info in the Postman collection and OpenAPI spec
  • to add the auth headers/query parameters/body parameters to the docs and example requests
  • to set the auth headers/query parameters/body parameters for response calls

Here are the available settings:

  • enabled: Set this to true if any endpoints in your API use authentication. Default: false.
  • default: Specify the default behaviour of your API. If you set this to true, your endpoints will be authenticated by default, and you can opt out individually with the @unauthenticated tag. If you set this to false, your endpoints will NOT be authenticated by default, and you can turn on auth individually with the @authenticated tag. Don’t forget to set auth.enabled to true! Default: false.
  • in: Where is the auth value meant to be sent in a request? Options:
    • query (for a query parameter)
    • body (for a body parameter)
    • basic (for HTTP Basic auth via an Authorization header)
    • bearer(for HTTP Bearer auth via an Authorization header)
    • header (for auth via a custom header)
  • name: The name of the parameter (eg token, key, apiKey) or header (eg Authorization, Api-Key). When in is set to bearer or basic, this value will be ignored, and the header used will be Authorization.
  • use_value: The value of the parameter to be used by Scribe to authenticate response calls. This will not be included in the generated documentation. If this value is null, Scribe will use a random value.
  • placeholder: Placeholder your users will see for the auth parameter in the example requests. If this is empty, Scribe will generate a realistic-looking auth token instead. Defaults to: “{YOUR_AUTH_KEY}”.
  • extra_info: Any extra authentication-related info for your users. For instance, you can describe how to find or generate their auth credentials. Markdown and HTML are supported. This will be included in the Authentication section.

strategies

A nested array of strategies Scribe will use to extract information about your routes at each stage. If you write or install a custom strategy, add it here under the appropriate stage. By default, this is set to:

    'strategies' => [
        'metadata' => [
            \Knuckles\Scribe\Extracting\Strategies\Metadata\GetFromDocBlocks::class,
        ],
        'urlParameters' => [
            \Knuckles\Scribe\Extracting\Strategies\UrlParameters\GetFromLaravelAPI::class,
            \Knuckles\Scribe\Extracting\Strategies\UrlParameters\GetFromUrlParamTag::class,
        ],
        'queryParameters' => [
            \Knuckles\Scribe\Extracting\Strategies\QueryParameters\GetFromQueryParamTag::class,
        ],
        'headers' => [
            \Knuckles\Scribe\Extracting\Strategies\Headers\GetFromRouteRules::class,
            \Knuckles\Scribe\Extracting\Strategies\Headers\GetFromHeaderTag::class,
        ],
        'bodyParameters' => [
            \Knuckles\Scribe\Extracting\Strategies\BodyParameters\GetFromFormRequest::class,
            \Knuckles\Scribe\Extracting\Strategies\BodyParameters\GetFromBodyParamTag::class,
        ],
        'responses' => [
            \Knuckles\Scribe\Extracting\Strategies\Responses\UseTransformerTags::class,
            \Knuckles\Scribe\Extracting\Strategies\Responses\UseResponseTag::class,
            \Knuckles\Scribe\Extracting\Strategies\Responses\UseResponseFileTag::class,
            \Knuckles\Scribe\Extracting\Strategies\Responses\UseApiResourceTags::class,
            \Knuckles\Scribe\Extracting\Strategies\Responses\ResponseCalls::class,
        ],
        'responseFields' => [
            \Knuckles\Scribe\Extracting\Strategies\ResponseFields\GetFromResponseFieldTag::class,
        ],
    ],

routes

The routes section is an array of items describing what routes in your application that should be included in the generated documentation.

Each item in the routes array is a route group, an array containing rules defining what routes belong in that group, and what settings to apply to them.

  • match: Here you define the rules that will be used to determine what routes in your application fall into this group. There are three kinds of rules defined here (keys in the match array):
  • domains: This key takes an array of domain names as its value. Only routes which are defined on the domains specified here will be matched as part of this group. Defaults to [*] (routes on all domains).
  • prefixes: The prefixes key is similar to the domains key, but is based on URL path prefixes (ie. what the part starts with, after the domain name). Defaults to [*] (all routes, regardless of path).

Important

The domains and prefixes keys are required for all route groups.

  • versions: This only applies when router is dingo. When using Dingo router, all routes must be specified inside versions. This means that you must specify the versions to be matched along with the domains and prefixes when describing a route group.

Important

Wildcards in versions are not supported; you must list out all the versions you want to match.

  • include: A list of patterns (route names or paths) which should be included in this group, even if they do not match the rules in the match section.
  • exclude: A list of patterns (route names or paths) which should be excluded from this group, even if they match the rules in the match section.

For instance, supposing our routes are set up like this:

Route::group(['domain' => 'v2-api.acme.co'], function () {
  Route::resource('/apps', 'AppController@listApps');
  Route::get('/users', 'UserController@listUsers')
    ->name('users.list');
  Route::get('/users/{id}', 'UserController@getUser')
    ->name('users.get');
  Route::get('/status', 'StatusController@getStatus')
    ->name('status');
});

Route::group(['domain' => 'api.acme.co'], function () {
  Route::get('/getUsers', 'v1\UserController@getUsers')
    ->name('v1.getUsers');
  Route::get('/metrics', 'PublicController@getStats')
    ->name('public.metrics');
});

If we only want to match endpoints on the v2-api.acme.co domain and we want to exclude the /status route but include the metrics route from api.acme.co, we could use this configuration:

    'match' => [
      'domains' => ['api.acme.co'],
      'prefixes' => ['*'],
    ],
    'include' => ['public.metrics'],
    'exclude' => ['status'],

Tip

You can use * as a wildcard in domains, :code:`prefixes, include and exclude. For instance, 'exclude' => ['users/*'] will exclude all routes with URLs starting with ‘users/’.

  • apply: The apply section of the route group is where you specify any additional settings to be applied to those routes when generating documentation. There are a number of settings you can tweak here:
    • headers: Any headers you specify here will be added to the headers shown in the example requests in your documentation. They will also be included in response calls. Headers are specified as key => value strings.
    • response_calls: These are the settings that will be applied when making “response calls”.

Tip

By splitting your routes into groups, you can apply different settings to different routes.

faker_seed

When generating example requests, this package uses the fzanninoto/faker package to generate random values. If you would like the package to generate the same example values for parameters on each run, set this to any number (eg. 1234).

Tip

Alternatively, you can set example values for parameters when documenting them.

fractal

This section only applies if you’re using transformers for your API (via the league/fractal package), and documenting responses with @transformer and @transformerCollection. Here, you configure how responses are transformed.

  • serializer: If you are using a custom serializer with league/fractal, you can specify it here. league/fractal comes with the following serializers:

    • \League\Fractal\Serializer\ArraySerializer::class
    • \League\Fractal\Serializer\DataArraySerializer::class
    • \League\Fractal\Serializer\JsonApiSerializer::class

    Leave this as null to use no serializer or return a simple JSON.

routeMatcher

The route matcher class provides the algorithm that determines what routes should be documented. The default matcher used is the included \Knuckles\Scribe\Matching\RouteMatcher::class, and you can provide your own custom implementation if you wish to programmatically change the algorithm. The provided matcher should be an instance of \Knuckles\Scribe\Matching\RouteMatcherInterface.

database_connections_to_transact

Scribe tries to run response calls and example model creation (API Resource and Transformer strategies) in a database transaction, and then roll it back so no changes are persisted. This item is where you specify which connections Scribe should run in transactions for.

By default, this is set to your default database connection ([config('database.default)]), so if you only use one database connections, you should be fine. If you use multiple connections, you can add the rest to the array:

'database_connections_to_transact' => [
    config('database.default'),
    'pgsql',
],

continue_without_database_transactions [deprecated]

Warning

This config item is deprecated and going away in v3. Use database_connections_to_transact instead.

By default, Scribe runs response calls and example model creation in a database transaction, and then rolls them back so no changes are persisted. If one of your database drivers does not support database transactions, Scribe will log an error and exit. If you would like Scribe to proceed (and persist the data), add the database driver class name to this array. For example:

'continue_without_database_transactions' => [
    Jenssegers\Mongodb\Connection::class,
],