Tabula

Static, dependency-free API documentation driven by a single JSON file.

🔗 Live demo

[!NOTE] Most of the non-source files in this repository — documentation, CI workflows, CLI scripts, and configuration — were largely generated with the help of Claude. The source files (src/) were written by hand and reviewed carefully. That said, if you spot anything insecure or incorrect anywhere in the repo, please don't hesitate to open an issue or submit a PR — all reports are welcome and appreciated.

Why Tabula?

• Zero runtime dependencies. Pure HTML + CSS + vanilla JavaScript. No React, no build step, no node_modules to serve.
• One source of truth. Edit api.json, reload — your docs are up to date.
• Framework agnostic. PHP, Go, Python, Rust, Node — Tabula doesn't care what's behind your API.
• Machine-validated. A built-in linter catches schema errors before they reach the browser.
• Themeable. Colors, fonts, logo, dark mode — all from the settings block, no CSS editing needed.

Quickstart

# 1. Scaffold a new docs folder
npx tabula-docs init my-docs

# 2. Edit your API schema
cd my-docs && $EDITOR api.json

# 3. Preview locally
npx tabula-docs serve .

Open http://localhost:3000. Done.

Manual setup

No CLI needed. Copy src/ into your project, drop your api.json next to index.html, and serve with any static server.

my-docs/
├── index.html
├── assets/
│   ├── images/
│   ├── scripts/
│   │   ├── pretty-json.js
│   │   ├── constants.js
│   │   ├── endpoints.js
│   │   ├── inputs.js
│   │   └── script.js
│   └── styles/
│       └── styles.css
└── api.json        ← your file

Validate your schema

npx tabula-docs validate path/to/api.json

Exit 0 = all clear. Exit 1 = errors to fix before deploying. See docs/validator.md for the full list of checks.

Examples

| Example | Description | | ---------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ | | examples/minimal/ | Two tables, ready in 30 seconds | | examples/blog/ | Realistic CRUD — posts, users, tags, pagination | | examples/ecommerce/ | Advanced — multipart uploads, order state machine, full auth |

Documentation

| Doc | Content | | ------------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------- | | docs/getting-started.md | CLI and manual setup walkthrough | | docs/schema-reference.md | Complete api.json field reference | | docs/theming.md | Colors, fonts, logo, dark mode | | docs/custom-endpoints.md | Non-CRUD endpoints, file uploads | | docs/validator.md | Linter usage and GitHub Actions integration | | docs/deployment.md | GitHub Pages, Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages |

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup instructions, commit conventions, and the PR process.

License

MIT © Lauwed