Whiteboard

Simply write beautiful API documentation.

This project started as a fork of the popular Slate API documentation tool, which uses ruby. Since I found the initial setup of Slate quite cumbersome, I started this NodeJS based project.

Check out a Whiteboard example API documentation.

Getting Started with Whiteboard

Prerequisites

You're going to need:

• Node JS

Yes, that's it!

Getting Set Up

1. Clone this repository to your hard drive with git clone https://github.com/mpociot/whiteboard.git
2. cd whiteboard
3. Install the dependencies: npm install
4. Start the test server: npm start

Now go ahead and visit http://localhost:4000 and you will be presented with a beautiful example API documentation as a starting point.

Go ahead and modify the markdown file at source/index.md to suit your needs.

Publishing your API documentation

The easiest way to publish your API documentation is using this command within your whiteboard directory:

npm run-script generate

This will generate a public folder which you can upload anywhere you want.

Windows users: You need to install the global hexo-cli package using npm install -g hexo-cli. To publish your API documentation under windows use hexo generate.

If you want other (more automated) deployment options like git, heroku, rsync or ftp - please take a look at the Hexo deployment documentation.

Generate the documentation programmatically

To generate the API documentation programmatically, for example in your automated build process, use the whiteboard module. The generate method will return a promise.

var Whiteboard = require('whiteboard');
Whiteboard.generate()
  .then(function(){
    // Generation was successful
  })
  .catch(function(){
    // Handle error
  })

Slate compatibility

Since both Whiteboard and Slate use regular markdown files to render the API documentation, your existing Slate API documentation should work just fine. If you encounter any issues, please submit an issue.

In depth documentation

For further documentation, read the Slate Wiki or the hexo documentation.

Documentations built with Whiteboard

• DISTRIBUTOR API Documentation from wifidistribution.com
• CommoPrices API Documentation from commoprices.com
• TradeIt JSON API from trade.it

Feel free to submit a PR with a link to your documentation.

Contributors

Slate was built by Robert Lord while at TripIt.

Whiteboard was built by Marcel Pociot.