Introducing JApiDocs: A Zero‑Annotation SpringBoot API Documentation Generator

JApiDocs is a SpringBoot API documentation generator that works without additional annotations, allowing developers to generate documentation directly from controller code.

Writing and maintaining API docs is often tedious for backend developers, but JApiDocs offers a lightweight solution that integrates seamlessly, saving time.

Compared with Swagger (which requires many annotations) and Spring RestDocs (which needs test cases), JApiDocs only needs proper comments and @param tags in the controller methods.

Quick start example shows a typical controller with @RequestMapping and method annotations; JApiDocs parses these to produce HTML documentation.

/**
 * 用户接口
 */
@RequestMapping("/api/user/")
@RestController
public class UserController {
    /**
     * 用户列表
     * @param listForm
     */
    @RequestMapping(path = "list", method = {RequestMethod.GET,  RequestMethod.POST}  )
    public ApiResult<PageResult<UserVO>> list(UserListForm listForm){
        return null;
    }

    /**
     * 保存用户
     * @param userForm
     */
    @PostMapping(path = "save")
    public ApiResult<UserVO> saveUser(@RequestBody UserForm userForm){
        return null;
    }
}

Running a small configuration in a main method generates the documentation automatically.

DocsConfig config = new DocsConfig();
config.setProjectPath("your springboot project path"); // 项目根目录
config.setProjectName("ProjectName"); // 项目名称
config.setApiVersion("V1.0");       // 声明该API的版本
config.setDocsPath("your api docs path"); // 生成API 文档所在目录
config.setAutoGenerate(Boolean.TRUE);  // 配置自动生成
Docs.buildHtmlDocs(config); // 执行生成文档

After setup, developers can focus on coding while JApiDocs handles documentation generation, offering features such as HTML export, client model code generation for Android and iOS, search, versioning, and customization.

Repository and documentation links are provided for further reference.