docbrown/docs/contributing_api.md
Jacob Herrington 7d0aeeefe5 Improve the clarity of the docs and fix Prettier config (#4899)
* Improve format and clarity of the docs [ci skip]

While this change produces a lot of git noise by enacting what seems
like an arbitrary linewrap on most of the files in the documentation it
will result in better version control and tracking of the changes in the
documentation.

For example, as it currently stands, if one was to make a
PR to move a comma in a sentence because each paragraph in most of the
files is on a single line, that small change would look in the git
history like the author had modified the entire paragraph. In reality,
this author just moved a comma.

This change also includes a significant number of modifications to the
more article-esque docs. Many of these docs were written in a sort of
stream-of-conciousness and aren't as easy to read as they could be.
Hopefully this is the first of several readability changes. If we could
get these docs to a more accessible reading level, we would probably see
an increase in contributions. :)

* Delegate markdown wrapping to Prettier

* Add linewrapping explanation in the docs [ci skip]
2019-11-26 08:40:53 -05:00

1.2 KiB

title
Contributing to the API Specification Docs

Contributing to API spec docs

The API docs follow the OpenAPI 3 specification.

Where the docs are located

We auto-generate the documentation from api_v0.yml within the /docs directory. We use ReDoc to turn the OpenAPI 3 format into a readable and searchable HTML documentation.

Updating API docs

Whenever you make changes to the API docs, make sure to bump the version in api_v0.yml.

Running and editing the docs locally

If you want to browse the documentation locally you can use:

yarn api-docs:serve

This will let you browse the auto-generated version of the doc locally, and it will reload the doc after every modification of the spec file.

If you have Visual Studio Code, we suggest you install the following extensions that enable validation and navigation within the spec file: