Web API Help pages - customizing Property documentation

Question

I have my web api and I added the web api help pages to auto-generate my documentation. It's working great for methods where my parameters are listed out, but I have a method like this:

public SessionResult PostLogin(CreateSessionCommand request)

And, on my help page, it is only listing the command parameter in the properties section. However, in the sample request section, it lists out all of the properties of my CreateSessionCommand class.

Parameters

Name | Description | Additional information

request | No documentation available. | Define this parameter in the request body.

I would like it instead to list all of the properties in my CreateSessionCommand class. Is there an easy way to do this?

Answer 1

this should go as an addition to @Josh answer. If you want not only to list properties from the model class, but also include documentation for each property, Areas/HelpPage/XmlDocumentationProvider.cs file should be modified as follows:

public virtual string GetDocumentation(HttpParameterDescriptor parameterDescriptor)
{
    ReflectedHttpParameterDescriptor reflectedParameterDescriptor = parameterDescriptor as ReflectedHttpParameterDescriptor;
    if (reflectedParameterDescriptor != null)
    {
        if (reflectedParameterDescriptor.ParameterInfo is CustomParameterInfo)
        {
            const string PropertyExpression = "/doc/members/member[@name='P:{0}']";
            var pi = (CustomParameterInfo) reflectedParameterDescriptor.ParameterInfo;

            string selectExpression = String.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, PropertyExpression, pi.Prop.DeclaringType.FullName + "." + pi.Prop.Name); 
            XPathNavigator methodNode = _documentNavigator.SelectSingleNode(selectExpression);
            if (methodNode != null)
            {
                return methodNode.Value.Trim();
            }
        }
        else
        {
            XPathNavigator methodNode = GetMethodNode(reflectedParameterDescriptor.ActionDescriptor);
            if (methodNode != null)
            {
                string parameterName = reflectedParameterDescriptor.ParameterInfo.Name;
                XPathNavigator parameterNode = methodNode.SelectSingleNode(String.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, ParameterExpression, parameterName));
                if (parameterNode != null)
                {
                    return parameterNode.Value.Trim();
                }
            }                    
        }
    }

    return null;
}

and CustomParameterInfo class should keep property info as well:

internal class CustomParameterInfo : ParameterInfo
{
    public PropertyInfo Prop { get; private set; }

    public CustomParameterInfo(PropertyInfo prop)
    {
        Prop = prop;
        base.NameImpl = prop.Name;
    }
}