Automatic Specification Generator for Jenkins REST API

Generating the expected HTTP responses is a difficult task. The student is expected to study Jenkins core to identify ways to extract them. For example, they could be extracted from Javadocs and annotations.

As part of the community bonding and student project proposal phase, the student is expected to make a few proposals on how to specify and generate the REST API for the Jenkins core and for the plugins. In the case the student finds that it is not possible to generate the REST API from a specification, the student should identify why this is not possible. We also ask the student to explore and propose a way to have REST API of plugins be generated from a REST API specification. For example, some auto-code could populate what the javadoc would look like in an empty-plugin used by the maven plugin generator.

The student is also expected to study and propose how the REST API documentation generation could be part of the REST API generator.

It might be helpful to automatically generate some code for the REST API when the plugin developer creates a plugin for the first time using the plugin skeleton generator. Any methodology created to handle the REST API should be built into the skeleton generator.

The jenkins core REST API and the plugins own REST API need to be versioned separately. It is suggested to focus first on generating the specification, then later look at the versioning of the REST API. Nested objects make versioning challenging.

Jenkins users should be easily able to see the REST APIs available for their installed Jenkins. For Jenkins core, this could be done with a URL like: http://localhost/rest/api/1.0. The plugins would have their own REST API path with a version number like: http://localhost/plugin/rest/api/1.0. Plugins and the core would thus have their own version number, and an additional REST API version number. Automated API documentation using the OpenAPI 3.0 specification is part of identifying the API specs.