ApiGen is the tool for creating professional API documentation from PHP source code, similar to discontinued phpDocumentor/phpDoc.
ApiGen has support for PHP 5.3 namespaces, packages, linking between documentation, cross referencing to PHP standard classes and general documentation, creation of highlighted source code and experimental support for PHP 5.4 traits.
For all support questions please use our mailing list. For bug reports and issues the issue tracker is available. Changes between versions are described in the change log.
- Our own TokenReflection library is used to describe the source code. It is safe (documented source code does not get included and thus parsed) and simple (you do not need to include or autoload all libraries you use in your source code).
- Detailed documentation of classes, functions and constants.
- Highlighted source code.
- Support of namespaces and packages with subpackages.
- Experimental support of traits.
- A page with trees of classes, interfaces, traits and exceptions.
- A page with a list of deprecated elements.
- A page with Todo tasks.
- Link to download documentation as ZIP archive.
- Checkstyle report of poorly documented elements.
- Support for docblock templates.
- Support for @inheritdoc.
- Support for {@link}.
- Active links in @see and @uses tags.
- Documentation of used internal PHP classes.
- Links to the start line in the highlighted source code for every described element.
- List of direct and indirect known subclasses, implementers and users for every class/interface/trait/exception.
- Check for a new version.
- Google CSE support with suggest.
- Google Analytics support.
- Support for multiple/custom templates.
- Sitemap and opensearch support.
- Support for different charsets and line endings.
- Lots of configuration options (see below).
The preferred installation way is using the PEAR package but there are three more ways how to install ApiGen.
PEAR is a distribution system for PHP packages. It is bundled with PHP since the 4.3 version and it is easy to use.
The PEAR package contains only ApiGen itself. Its dependencies (Nette, Texy, FSHL and TokenReflection) have to be installed separately. But do not panic, the PEAR installer can take care of it.
The easiest way is to use the PEAR auto discovery feature. In that case all you have to do is to type two commands.
pear config-set auto_discover 1
pear install pear.apigen.org/apigen
If you don't want to use the auto discovery, you have to add PEAR channels of all ApiGen libraries manually. In this case you can install ApiGen by typing these commands.
pear channel-discover pear.apigen.org
pear channel-discover pear.nette.org
pear channel-discover pear.texy.info
pear channel-discover pear.kukulich.cz
pear channel-discover pear.andrewsville.cz
pear install apigen/ApiGen
If you encounter a message like WARNING: channel "pear.apigen.org" has updated its protocols, use "pear channel-update pear.apigen.org" to update, you need to tell PEAR to update its information about the ApiGen channel using the suggested command.
pear channel-update pear.apigen.org
Using the standalone package is even easier than using the PEAR installer but it does not handle updates automatically.
To download the actual release visit the Downloads section. There you find separate packages for each release in two formats - zip and tar.gz. These packages are prepared by the ApiGen team and are truly standalone; they contain all required libraries in appropriate versions. You just need to extract the contents of an archive and you can start using ApiGen.
GitHub allows you to download any repository as a zip or tar.gz archive. You can use this feature to download an archive with the current version of ApiGen. However this approach has one disadvantage. Such archive (in contrast to the standalone packages) does not contain required libraries. They are included as git submodules in the repository and GitHub simply ignores them when generating the archive. It means that you will have to obtain required libraries manually.
The last way how to install ApiGen is simply to clone our repository. If you do so, remember to fetch and rebase to get new versions and do not forget to update submodules in the vendor directory.
apigen --config <path> [options]
apigen --source <path> --destination <path> [options]
As you can see, you can use ApiGen either by providing individual parameters via the command line or using a config file. Moreover you can combine the two methods and the command line parameters will have precedence over those in the config file.
Every configuration option has to be followed by its value. And it is exactly the same to write --config=file.conf and --config file.conf. The only exceptions are boolean options (those with yes|no values). When using these options on the command line you do not have to provide the "yes" value explicitly. If ommited, it is assumed that you wanted to turn the option on. So using --debug=yes and --debug does exactly the same (and the opposite is --debug=no).
Some options can have multiple values. To do so, you can either use them multiple times or separate their values by a comma. It means that --source=file1.php --source=file2.php and --source=file1.php,file2.php is exactly the same.
--config|-c <file>
Path to the config file.
--source|-s <directory|file> required
Path to the directory or file to be processed. You can use the parameter multiple times to provide a list of directories or files. All types of PHAR archives are supported (requires the PHAR extension). To process gz/bz2 compressed archives you need the appropriate extension (see requirements).
--destination|-d <directory> required
Documentation will be generated into this directory.
--extensions <list>
List of allowed file extensions, default is "php".
--exclude <mask>
Directories and files matching this file mask will not be parsed. You can exclude for example tests from processing this way. This parameter is case sensitive and can be used multiple times.
--skip-doc-path <mask>
--skip-doc-prefix <value>
Using this parameters you can tell ApiGen not to generate documentation for elements from certain files or with certain name prefix. Such classes will appear in class trees, but will not create a link to their documentation. These parameters are case sensitive and can be used multiple times.
--charset <list>
Character set of source files, default is "auto" that lets ApiGen choose from all supported character sets. However if you use only one characters set across your source files you should set it explicitly to avoid autodetection because it can be tricky (and is not completely realiable). Moreover autodetection slows down the process of generating documentation. You can also use the parameter multiple times to provide a list of all used character sets in your documentation. In that case ApiGen will choose one of provided character sets for each file.
--main <value>
Elements with this name prefix will be considered as the "main project" (the rest will be considered as libraries).
--title <value>
Title of the generated documentation.
--base-url <value>
Documentation base URL used in the sitemap. Only needed if you plan to make your documentation public.
--google-cse-id <value>
If you have a Google CSE ID, the search box will use it when you do not enter an exact class, constant or function name.
--google-cse-label <value>
This will be the default label when using Google CSE.
--google-analytics <value>
A Google Analytics tracking code. If provided, an ansynchronous tracking code will be placed into every generated page.
--template-config <file>
Template config file, default is the config file of ApiGen default template.
--allowed-html <list>
List of allowed HTML tags in documentation separated by comma. Default value is "b,i,a,ul,ol,li,p,br,var,samp,kbd,tt".
--groups <value>
How should elements be grouped in the menu. Possible options are "auto", "namespaces", "packages" and "none". Default value is "auto" (namespaces are used if the source code uses them, packages otherwise).
--autocomplete <list>
List of element types that will appear in the search input autocomplete. Possible values are "classes", "constants", "functions", "methods", "properties" and "classconstants". Default value is "classes,constants,functions".
--access-levels <list>
Access levels of methods and properties that should get their documentation parsed. Default value is "public,protected" (don't generate private class members).
--internal <yes|no>
Generate documentation for elements marked as internal (@internal without description) and display parts of the documentation that are marked as internal (@internal with description ... or inline {@internal ...}), default is "No".
--php <yes|no>
Generate documentation for PHP internal classes, default is "Yes".
--tree <yes|no>
Generate tree view of classes, interfaces, traits and exceptions, default is "Yes".
--deprecated <yes|no>
Generate documentation for deprecated elements, default is "No".
--todo <yes|no>
Generate a list of tasks, default is "No".
--source-code <yes|no>
Generate highlighted source code for user defined elements, default is "Yes".
--download <yes|no>
Add a link to download documentation as a ZIP archive, default is "No".
--report <file>
Save a checkstyle report of poorly documented elements into a file.
--wipeout <yes|no>
Delete files generated in the previous run, default is "Yes".
--quiet <yes|no>
Do not print any messages to the console, default is "No".
--progressbar <yes|no>
Display progressbars, default is "Yes".
--colors <yes|no>
Use colors, default "Yes" in terminals with colors support. Windows doesn't support colors in console however you can enable it with Ansicon.
--update-check <yes|no>
Check for a new version of ApiGen, default is "Yes".
--debug <yes|no>
Display additional information (exception trace) in case of an error, default is "No".
--help|-h
Display the list of possible options.
Only --source and --destination parameters are required. You can provide them via command line or a configuration file.
Instead of providing individual parameters via the command line, you can prepare a config file for later use. You can use all the above listed parameters (with one exception: the --config option) only without dashes and with an uppercase letter after each dash (so --access-level becomes accessLevel).
ApiGen uses the NEON file format for all its config files. You can try the online parser to debug your config files and see how they get parsed.
Then you can call ApiGen with a single parameter --config specifying the config file to load.
apigen --config <path> [options]
Even when using a config file, you can still provide additional parameters via the command line. Such parameters will have precedence over parameters from the config file.
Keep in mind, that any values in the config file will be overwritten by values from the command line. That means that providing the --source parameter values both in the config file and via the command line will not result in using all the provided values but only those from the command line.
If you provide no command line parameters at all, ApiGen will try to load a default config file called apigen.neon in the current working directory. If found it will work as if you used the --config option. Note that when using any command line option, you have to specify the config file if you have one. ApiGen will try to load one automatically only when no command line parameters are used. Option names have to be in camelCase in config files (--template-config on the command line becomes templateConfig in a config file). You can see a full list of configuration options with short descriptions in the example config file apigen.neon.example.
We are generating documentation for the Nella Framework. We want Nette and Doctrine to be parsed as well because we want their classes to appear in class trees, lists of parent classes and their members in lists of inherited properties, methods and constants. However we do not want to generate their full documentation along with highlighted source codes. And we do not want to process any "test" directories, because there might be classes that do not belong to the project actually.
apigen --source ~/nella/Nella --source ~/doctrine2/lib/Doctrine --source ~/doctrine2/lib/vendor --source ~/nette/Nette --skip-doc-path "~/doctrine2/*" --skip-doc-prefix Nette --exclude "*/tests/*" --destination ~/docs/ --title "Nella Framework"
ApiGen requires PHP 5.3 or later. Four libraries it uses (Nette, Texy, TokenReflection and FSHL) require four additional PHP extensions: tokenizer, mbstring, iconv and json. For documenting PHAR archives you need the phar extension and for documenting gz or bz2 compressed PHARs, you need the zlib or bz2 extension respectively. To generate the ZIP file with documentation you need the zip extension.
When generating documentation of large libraries (Zend Framework for example) we recommend not to have the Xdebug PHP extension loaded (it does not need to be used, it significantly slows down the generating process even when only loaded).
- Doctrine
- Nette Framework
- TokenReflection library
- FSHL library
- Nella Framework
- Jyxo PHP Libraries, both namespaced and non-namespaced
Besides from these publicly visible examples there are companies that use ApiGen to generate their inhouse documentation: Medio Interactive, Wikidi.