ASP.NET Web API - Automatic API Documentation Generation

Question

We are creating a RESTful API project using ASP.NET web API.

We are looking for a simple way to create documentation automatically for every method call that we open in our API, including: HTTP verbs, URIs, expected parameters, and a sample payload.

Can anyone recommend some of the tools and approaches they used to achieve this for an ASP.NET Web API project?

Are there even tools that will do this? Or will it be a disciplined manual process?

Answer 1

The webapi team is currently working on a documentation tool. The tool is called ApiExplorer.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/yaohuang1/archive/2012/05/13/asp-net-web-api-introducing-iapiexplorer-apiexplorer.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/yaohuang1/archive/2012/05/21/asp-net-web-api-generating-a-web-api-help-page-using-apiexplorer.aspx

Update: here is the official documentation: http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/creating-web-apis/creating-api-help-pages

Update 3/1/2015 - There is a project called Swashbuckle that uses ApiExplorer to create Swagger Documents. ( Github , nuget )

Answer 2

Just released an OSS library called Swank that does this. Automatically creates documentation, supports XML comments, markdowns, emojis, coventions, etc.: http://www.mikeobrien.net/swank/