Zero-annotation OpenAPI documentation generator for Laravel
Generate complete API docs from your existing code in seconds. No annotations required.
Documentation • Quick Start • Compare
// ❌ Traditional approach: Annotations everywhere
/**
* @OA\Post(
* path="/api/users",
* @OA\RequestBody(
* @OA\JsonContent(
* @OA\Property(property="name", type="string"),
* @OA\Property(property="email", type="string", format="email"),
* // ... 50 more lines of annotations
* )
* ),
* @OA\Response(response="200", description="Success")
* )
*/
public function store(StoreUserRequest $request) { ... }With Laravel Spectrum: Zero annotations needed. Your existing FormRequest and Resource classes are your documentation.
# Install
composer require wadakatu/laravel-spectrum --dev
# Generate OpenAPI documentation
php artisan spectrum:generate
# View in browser (HTML with Swagger UI)
php artisan spectrum:generate --format=html
# Open: storage/app/spectrum/openapi.htmlThat's it. Full OpenAPI 3.1 documentation generated from your existing code.
| Your Code | Generated Documentation |
|---|---|
FormRequest::rules() |
Request body schemas with validation |
$request->validate([...]) |
Inline validation rules |
API Resources |
Response schemas |
Auth middleware (auth:sanctum) |
Security schemes |
Route parameters ({user}) |
Path parameters with types |
@deprecated PHPDoc |
Deprecated operation flags |
php artisan spectrum:watch
# Browser auto-refreshes when you change codephp artisan spectrum:mock
# Frontend team can develop without waiting for backendphp artisan spectrum:export postman # Postman collection
php artisan spectrum:export insomnia # Insomnia workspace- Parallel processing for large codebases
- Incremental generation (only changed files)
- Smart caching
| Laravel Spectrum | Swagger-PHP | Scribe | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zero annotations | ✅ | ❌ | Partial |
| Setup time | 30 sec | Hours | ~30 min |
| FormRequest detection | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Mock server | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Live reload | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Postman/Insomnia export | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| OpenAPI 3.1 | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
- PHP 8.2+
- Laravel 11.x or 12.x
Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for details.
Laravel Spectrum is open-source software licensed under the MIT license.
Made with ❤️ by wadakatu