Sami: Yet another PHP API documentation generator

Fabien Potencier

May 15, 2012

Today is my “let open source some of my private Github repositories” day, and more specifically, I’m releasing a bunch of code related to documentation.

Earlier today, I’ve released the Sphinx extensions I’m using to generate the Symfony documentation.

And now, I’m releasing my API documentation generator. Yes, I know that PHP already has a bunch of such generators, but I started to work on this project several years ago, when the only viable option was the old phpdocumentor.

Nowadays, phpDocumentor version 2 is probably the best option out there as it has a good architecture, it works fine, it is extensible, and quite a few big PHP projects is already using it. And that’s fine. I don’t want to compete with it, I don’t want to replace it, I’m just open sourcing some code used by Symfony, Twig, and Silex because I’m not comfortable with closed-source software. And to be totally honest and transparent, I have not released the code before because it was not “good enough”.

With this disclaimer out of the way, let’s see what makes Sami “different” (compared to phpdocumentor)?

  • It uses a PHP file for configuration to give a very flexible way of tweaking the API generation;

  • It uses Twig for templating;

  • It uses a dependency injection container (Pimple) to let you override any internal class;

  • It only works with PHP 5.3 (but it can generate documentation for PHP 5.2 projects);

  • It uses the excellent PHP Parser project for PHP code parsing;

  • It is able to manage versions of your code to generate documentation for all of them in a single tree (without the overhead of re-parsing everything for each version of course).

Curious about what Sami generates? Have a look at the Symfony API.

Installation

First, get Sami from Github (or integrate it as a dependency in your project Composer file – you are using Composer, right?):

https://github.com/fabpot/Sami

You can also download an archive from Github.

As Sami uses Composer to manage its dependencies, installing it is a matter of running composer:

$ composer.phar install

Check that everything worked as expected by executing the sami.php file without any arguments:

$ php sami.php

Configuration

Before generating documentation, you must create a configuration file. Here is the simplest possible one:

<?php

return new Sami\Sami('/path/to/symfony/src');

The configuration file must return an instance of Sami\Sami and the first argument of the constructor is the path to the code you want to generate documentation for.

Actually, instead of a directory, you can use any valid PHP iterator (and for that matter any instance of the Symfony Finder class):

<?php

use Sami\Sami;
use Symfony\Component\Finder\Finder;

$iterator = Finder::create()
    ->files()
    ->name('*.php')
    ->exclude('Resources')
    ->exclude('Tests')
    ->in('/path/to/symfony/src')
;

return new Sami($iterator);

The Sami constructor optionally takes an array of options as a second argument:

return new Sami($iterator, array(
    'theme'                => 'symfony',
    'title'                => 'Symfony2 API',
    'build_dir'            => __DIR__.'/build',
    'cache_dir'            => __DIR__.'/cache',
    'default_opened_level' => 2,
));

And here is how you can configure different versions:

<?php

use Sami\Sami;
use Sami\Version\GitVersionCollection;
use Symfony\Component\Finder\Finder;

$iterator = Finder::create()
    ->files()
    ->name('*.php')
    ->exclude('Resources')
    ->exclude('Tests')
    ->in($dir = '/path/to/symfony/src')
;

// generate documentation for all v2.0.* tags, the 2.0 branch, and the master one
$versions = GitVersionCollection::create($dir)
    ->addFromTags('v2.0.*')
    ->add('2.0', '2.0 branch')
    ->add('master', 'master branch')
;

return new Sami($iterator, array(
    'theme'                => 'symfony',
    'versions'             => $versions,
    'title'                => 'Symfony2 API',
    'build_dir'            => __DIR__.'/../build/sf2/%version%',
    'cache_dir'            => __DIR__.'/../cache/sf2/%version%',
    'default_opened_level' => 2,
));

To generate documentation for a PHP 5.2 project, simply set the simulate_namespaces option to true.

Rendering

Now that we have a configuration file, let’s generate the API documentation:

$ php sami.php update /path/to/config.php

The generated documentation can be found under the configured build/ directory (note that the client side search engine does not work on Chrome due to JavaScript execution restriction – it works fine in Firefox).

By default, Sami is configured to run in “incremental” mode. It means that when running the update command, Sami only re-generates the files that need to be updated based on what has changed in your code since the last execution.

Sami also detects problems in your phpdoc and can tell you what you need to fix if you add the -v option:

$ php sami.php update /path/to/config.php -v

Creating a Theme

If the default themes do not suit your needs, you can very easily create a new one, or just override an existing one.

A theme is just a directory with a manifest.yml file that describes the theme (this is a YAML file):

name:   symfony
parent: enhanced

The above configuration creates a new symfony theme based on the enhanced built-in theme. To override a template, just create a file with the same name as the original one. For instance, here is how you can extend the default class template to prefix the class name with “Class " in the class page title:

{# pages/class.twig #}

{% extends 'default/pages/class.twig' %}

{% block title %}Class {{ parent() }}{% endblock %}

If you are familiar with Twig, you will be able to very easily tweak every aspect of the templates as everything has been well isolated in named Twig blocks.

A theme can also add more templates and static files. Here is the manifest for the default theme:

name: default

static:
    'stylesheet.css':        'stylesheet.css'

global:
    'index.twig':            'index.html'
    'namespaces.twig':       'namespaces-frame.html'
    'classes.twig':          'classes-frame.html'
    'pages/opensearch.twig': 'opensearch.xml'
    'pages/index.twig':      'doc-index.html'
    'pages/namespaces.twig': 'namespaces.html'
    'pages/interfaces.twig': 'interfaces.html'
    'pages/classes.twig':    'classes.html'

namespace:
    'namespace.twig':        '%s/namespace-frame.html'
    'pages/namespace.twig':  '%s.html'

class:
    'pages/class.twig':      '%s.html'

Files are contained into sections, depending on how Sami needs to treat them:

  • static: Files are copied as is (for assets like images, stylesheets, or JavaScript files);

  • global: Templates that do not depend on the current class context;

  • namespace: Templates that should be generated for every namespace;

  • class: Templates that should be generated for every class.

That’s all there is to it for now. More documentation and a website is coming soon.