Documentation

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Documentation provides the information for describing a service.

Example:

documentation:
  summary: >
    The Google Calendar API gives access
    to most calendar features.
  pages:
  - name: Overview
    content: (== include google/foo/overview.md ==)
  - name: Tutorial
    content: (== include google/foo/tutorial.md ==)
    subpages;
    - name: Java
      content: (== include google/foo/tutorial_java.md ==)
  rules:
  - selector: google.calendar.Calendar.Get
    description: >
      ...
  - selector: google.calendar.Calendar.Put
    description: >
      ...

Documentation is provided in markdown syntax. In addition to standard markdown features, definition lists, tables and fenced code blocks are supported. Section headers can be provided and are interpreted relative to the section nesting of the context where a documentation fragment is embedded.

Documentation from the IDL is merged with documentation defined via the config at normalization time, where documentation provided by config rules overrides IDL provided.

A number of constructs specific to the API platform are supported in documentation text.

In order to reference a proto element, the following notation can be used:

[fully.qualified.proto.name][]

To override the display text used for the link, this can be used:

[display text][fully.qualified.proto.name]

Text can be excluded from doc using the following notation:

(-- internal comment --)

A few directives are available in documentation. Note that directives must appear on a single line to be properly identified. The include directive includes a markdown file from an external source:

(== include path/to/file ==)

The resource_for directive marks a message to be the resource of a collection in REST view. If it is not specified, tools attempt to infer the resource from the operations in a collection:

(== resource_for v1.shelves.books ==)

The directive suppress_warning does not directly affect documentation and is documented together with service config validation.

JSON representation 
{
  "summary": string,
  "pages": [
    {
      object (Page)
    }
  ],
  "rules": [
    {
      object (DocumentationRule)
    }
  ],
  "documentationRootUrl": string,
  "serviceRootUrl": string,
  "overview": string
}
Fields
summary

string

A short summary of what the service does. Can only be provided by plain text.
pages[]

object (Page)

The top level pages for the documentation set.
rules[]

object (DocumentationRule)

A list of documentation rules that apply to individual API elements.

NOTE: All service configuration rules follow "last one wins" order.
documentationRootUrl

string

The URL to the root of documentation.
serviceRootUrl

string

Specifies the service root url if the default one (the service name from the yaml file) is not suitable. This can be seen in any fully specified service urls as well as sections that show a base that other urls are relative to.
overview

string

Declares a single overview page. For example:

documentation:
  summary: ...
  overview: (== include overview.md ==)

This is a shortcut for the following declaration (using pages style):

documentation:
  summary: ...
  pages:
  - name: Overview
    content: (== include overview.md ==)

Note: you cannot specify both overview field and pages field.

Page

Represents a documentation page. A page can contain subpages to represent nested documentation set structure.

JSON representation 
{
  "name": string,
  "content": string,
  "subpages": [
    {
      object (Page)
    }
  ]
}
Fields
name

string

The name of the page. It will be used as an identity of the page to generate URI of the page, text of the link to this page in navigation, etc. The full page name (start from the root page name to this page concatenated with .) can be used as reference to the page in your documentation. For example:

pages:
- name: Tutorial
  content: (== include tutorial.md ==)
  subpages:
  - name: Java
    content: (== include tutorial_java.md ==)

You can reference Java page using Markdown reference link syntax: [Java][Tutorial.Java].
content

string

The Markdown content of the page. You can use

(== include {path} ==)

to include content from a Markdown file.
subpages[]

object (Page)

Subpages of this page. The order of subpages specified here will be honored in the generated docset.

DocumentationRule

A documentation rule provides information about individual API elements.

JSON representation 
{
  "selector": string,
  "description": string,
  "deprecationDescription": string
}
Fields
selector

string

The selector is a comma-separated list of patterns. Each pattern is a qualified name of the element which may end in "*", indicating a wildcard. Wildcards are only allowed at the end and for a whole component of the qualified name, i.e. "foo.*" is ok, but not "foo.b*" or "foo.*.bar". A wildcard will match one or more components. To specify a default for all applicable elements, the whole pattern "*" is used.
description

string

Description of the selected API(s).
deprecationDescription

string

Deprecation description of the selected element(s). It can be provided if an element is marked as deprecated.