Typical apigentools Workflow

This page summarizes the typical workflow that you would use when doing changes to your spec and regenerating your client code:

Overview

Generally, the workflow steps are:

The following sections explain the individual steps.

Get Set Up

Install apigentools from PyPI:

pip install apigentools

Note that apigentools are shipped with 2 executables - apigentools and container-apigentools. Consult CLI documentation on how these are used. The following sections will provide examples using both of these.

Create "Spec Repo"

To create a scaffold Spec Repo structure in myapispec directory, run:

apigentools init myapispec

Modify the OpenAPI Spec Sections

When you want to add/change behaviour of your generated clients, you need to modify the spec sections for the relevant major version of your API under spec/<MAJOR_VERSION>. If you're adding new section files, don't forget to also add them in spec_sections in config/config.json. If you're adding a new major API version, don't forget to add it in top-level spec_versions and then in per-language spec_versions in config/config.yaml (thanks to this, you can choose which languages generate code for which major API versions).

Modify apigentools Configuration

When adding new languages to generate clients for, adding major API version or adding spec sections, you'll need to do the corresponding changes to config/config.yaml.

Validate Specs

To check basic validity of your specs, use the validate command.

Locally

Run apigentools validate.

Docker

Run container-apigentools apigentools:latest validate

Add Template Patches

Templates that are built into openapi-generator are used to generate API clients. Sometimes it's necessary to modify these templates. To achieve that, you can include template-patches directory in yout repository with patches that get applied to the upstream templates. You can create such patches by doing changes in a checked out openapi-generator repo:

git clone git@github.com:OpenAPITools/openapi-generator.git
cd openapi-generator
# do changes in modules/openapi-generator/src/main/resources/<language>
git diff --relative=modules/openapi-generator/src/main/resources/ > /path/to/spec/repo/template-patches/java-0001-my-functionality.patch

All files with .patch extension from template-patches directory are applied

Add Downstream Templates

Sometimes you may need to add our own templates that need to be rendered in a completely different context and have different usage than those provided in openapi-generator upstream. These can be added to the downstream-templates/<language> directory. This is best used to add files that are top-level for each of the generated repositories, as the openapi-generator is used to render only per-major-API-version subdirectories with the actual code.

Note that downstream templates are rendered after the code generation is done; take this into consideration should they overwrite files written by previous code generation. Downstream templates are mustache templates.

Prepare Templates

Preparing templates means obtaining templates from openapi-generator upstream (either from git repo, jar file or a local dir) and applying template patches on top of them.

Locally

Run e.g. apigentools templates local-dir /path/to/base/templates

Docker

Run e.g. container-apigentools apigentools:latest templates openapi-git v4.1.0

Generate Client Code

To generate actual client code with the generate command, you need templates prepared.

Locally

Run apigentools generate

Docker

Run container-apigentools apigentools:latest generate

Run Tests

openapi-generator pre-creates unittest files for most of the languages supported. The tests themselves need to be implemented by hand, but apigentools still allows running them as an optional part of the process. The test command will look for Dockerfile.test.{major_api_version} file in the top level directory of the generated repo (not in the subdirectory with code for that specific major API version) - for example, if a specific language in config.json has "github_repo_name": "my-client-java" and "spec_versions": ["v1", "v2"], apigentools will be looking for generated/my-client-java/Dockerfile.test.v1 and generated/my-client-java/Dockerfile.test.v2. For each of these files found, it is built and then executed without arguments. These Dockerfiles would need to be put in the repos manually or added via the downstream templates mechanism.

Locally

Run apigentools test

Docker

Run container-apigentools apigentools:latest test

Push Code

The push command allows for taking the generated client code and pushing it up to the remote target directory so that a quick Pull Request can be created and merged.

Note that when using the push command, the generated directory must be empty, and the generate command should be run with the --clone-repo flag. This ensure that the latest master of the client repository is cloned into the generated directory, and the generated client is generated on top of this, ensuring any ignore rules are respected.

Run All Automated Parts of the Workflow

Note that all the above commands (validate, templates, generate and test) can be run in sequence with Docker in just one command by passing no additional arguments to container-apigentools:

Run container-apigentools apigentools:local