avdoc

CLI tool to generate human-readable HTML documentation for an Apache Avro schema AVSC file.

Want Avro schema docs? 'avdoc!

Installation

Requirements

Software required outside of Python package dependencies:

• Graphviz for the reference graph.

Install as Python package

Install the avdoc package on PyPI:

pip install --upgrade avdoc

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

$ avdoc --help

usage: avdoc [-h] [--version] [--schema-title SCHEMA_TITLE]
             [--schema-version SCHEMA_VERSION]
             avsc

CLI tool to generate HTML documentation for an Apache Avro schema

positional arguments:
  avsc

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  --schema-title SCHEMA_TITLE
  --schema-version SCHEMA_VERSION

Features

• graph/diagram of which record schemas reference each other
  • reference graph for every complex (record) type
• Markdown support in "doc" strings
• supports all complex Avro types
  • record
  • enum
  • array
  • union
  • error
  • map
  • request

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.

Development

• devenv for development environment

devenv shell sets up Python with dependencies installed. This can be auto-activated with devenv auto-activation.

Publishing

Bump version

bumpversion major|minor|patch

Update documentation

Run mdsh.

Publish Python package to PyPI

Run uv publish and use PyPI token as password:

uv build && uv publish

Architecture

Not much to speak of.

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.

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:

[…] requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server. Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the modified version.

avdoc is released as copyleft software. 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 its 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 decay, 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™.