RESTful web service API documentation with Sphinx

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

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!

Answer 2

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.