CLI tool to generate HTML documentation for an Apache Avro schema
Project description
avdoc
CLI tool to generate human-readable HTML documentation for an Apache Avro schema AVSC file.
Want Avro schema docs? 'avdoc!
Installation
Usage
python -m avdoc tests/example.avsc > out/example.html && open out/example.html
To provide a version ID, e.g. the current git commit:
python -m avdoc --schema-version $(git rev-parse --short head) example.avsc > out/example.html
Requirements
Software required outside of Python package dependencies:
- Graphviz for the reference graph.
Development
devenv shell
should set up Python & Poetry with dependencies installed.
Use .venv/bin/python
as your Python interpreter.
Publishing
poetry publish --build
Architecture
Not really.
avdoc
is a couple of hundred lines of Python script
generating static HTML, with a bit of string munging to get component outputs
into the final HTML output page.
This code is purpose-oriented.
The output is opinionated, but not much time has been spent on the code
past getting it working for my own needs.
It's not intended to be exemplary of anything in particular.
Design Goals
The output should:
- be well-formatted semantic HTML.
- be legible in basic browsers without styling.
- aid understanding of the underlying schema.
- be a single static file for sharing without dependencies.
- be linkable to reference specific schemas and fields.
Maintenance
I probably won't pay too much attention to avdoc
maintenance
once it's suitable for my own needs.
I'd like to try to ensure that dependencies are kept up to date.
Fork for your own needs. Raise a PR if you'd like me to consider including your changes. Make sure you adhere to the license by ensuring your users have access to your modifications.
License
AGPL:
avdoc
is copyleft.
If you modify avdoc
then you must make changes available to your users.
If the AGPL license is an issue, and you want to relicense avdoc
privately,
then reach out to discuss pricing.
Prior Art
avdoc
is intended as a replacement for avrodoc-plus,
which itself was intended as a replacement for avrodoc,
via a long line of forks.
To run avrodoc-plus
and see it's output:
npm install @mikaello/avrodoc-plus
node_modules/@mikaello/avrodoc-plus/bin/avrodoc-plus.js example.avsc --output out/avrodocplus.html
Why?
Unfortunately the original avrodoc and forks are all in varying stages of software rot, mostly due to NodeJS ecosystem churn. Their NPM package dependencies include packages which have themselves gone unmaintained or had breaking changes in following versions, with CVEs piling up against the transitive dependencies. avrodoc-plus has about 10 critical CVEs in its dependency graph. This isn't necessarily an issue in itself unless you're running these avrodoc tools in an online capacity or on untrusted input. But at $WORK it was generating a lot of false-positives in automatic SBOM security scanners which had to be explained to infosec specialists.
The HTML output from the avrodoc tools is also rather dynamic, requiring JS to render, when it could just be a classic HTML page.
I have taken the opportunity to implement some quality-of-life improvements for readers. See §Design Goals for more info.
Why the name avdoc
specifically?
The Apache Software Foundation protects project name trademarks
(quite rightly) and I wanted to avoid the kcat naming issue.
avdoc
is "Powered by Apache Avro™" but not a part of Apache Avro™.
Project details
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