API ReferencesGeneration

Generate GraphQL Reference

View as Markdown

Fern generates API Reference documentation from a GraphQL schema. Add your schema file to your Fern project and Fern renders queries, mutations, subscriptions, and types as an interactive reference.

Configuration

1

Set up your project structure

Add your GraphQL schema file to your /fern directory and create a generators.yml that references it:

generators.yml
1api:
2  specs:
3    - graphql: plants.schema.graphql
4      name: Plants
5      origin: https://api.example.com/plants/graphql
2

Add the GraphQL Reference to your navigation

Add - api: API Reference to your navigation in docs.yml:

docs.yml
1navigation:
2  - api: API Reference
3

Customize the layout

For a full list of configuration options and layout customizations, see Customize API Reference layout.

Include more than one GraphQL Reference

To include multiple GraphQL definitions in your documentation, use the api-name property. The api-name corresponds to the folder name containing your GraphQL schema.

fern
fern.config.json
docs.yml
plant-graphql
schema.graphql# Plant GraphQL schema
generators.yml
garden-graphql
schema.graphql# Garden GraphQL schema
generators.yml
docs.yml
1navigation:
2  - api: Plant GraphQL API
3    api-name: plant-graphql
4  - api: Garden GraphQL API
5    api-name: garden-graphql

Configuration properties

api.specs[].graphql
Required

Path to your GraphQL schema file. You can include multiple GraphQL specs if your project exposes more than one GraphQL API.

api.specs[].name

Name of the folder that operations from this spec appear under in the API Reference sidebar. Use this to group related GraphQL operations together.

api.specs[].origin

URL of your GraphQL API endpoint. Fern performs introspection against this endpoint to fetch the schema. When set, running fern api update updates the local schema from this endpoint.