How to Generate API Documentation with Insomnia

joselatines

Jose Latines

Posted on May 4, 2023

How to Generate API Documentation with Insomnia

Insomnia is a powerful REST client that can help you test and debug your APIs. But did you know that you can also use it to generate API documentation? In this tutorial, we'll show you how to do just that.

1. Create your Insomnia Project

First, you'll need to create an Insomnia project. If you're not familiar with Insomnia, you can download it for free from the official website.

Insomnia project creation screenshot

2. Export your project in JSON format

Once you've created your project, you'll need to export it in JSON format. To do this, go to File > Export Data > Insomnia v4 (JSON).

Exporting the Insomnia project screenshot

Choosing the export destination screenshot

3. Generate the documentation

Before you can generate the documentation, you'll need to install Node.js on your system.

Once you have Node.js installed, open your command prompt or terminal and navigate to the folder where your JSON file is located.

Navigating to the folder where the JSON file is located screenshot

Execute the following command:



npx insomnia-documenter --config <name of the file>.json --output <name of the documentation>.json


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Generating the documentation screenshot

4. See your documentation

Local Documentation

If you want to see your documentation on your local machine, you'll need to run a server. To do this, navigate to the folder where your documentation was generated and execute the following command:



npx serve


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Running the server screenshot

Viewing the local documentation screenshot

Online Documentation

If you want to share your documentation on the internet, you'll need to upload it to a deploy website. We recommend using Netlify because it's easy and fast.

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joselatines
Jose Latines

Posted on May 4, 2023

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