Sure, REST APIs should ideally use HATEOAS and be hypertext driven (with heavy use of media types), but also having simple human-friendly documentation for developers to work off of is helpful.
Some specific tools that are helpful for generating documentation like this:
- Swagger
- An open spec for describing REST APIs [ github ]
- Tools for auto-generating
- Documentation
- Code for your API
- Donated to the OpenAPI initiative and renamed OpenAPI in 2015
- Mashery
- An open source project [ github ]
- Tools for generating
- Documentation
- An exploration interface for your API
- Apiary and API Blueprint
- Write the API description in a DSL within markdown
- Tools for auto-generating
- Documentation
- Mock server
- Seems to be focused on ruby+mac devs
- RAML
- A spec for describing REST APIs [ github ]
- WADL
- A spec for writing discoverable API docs with XML
- Some discussion comparing WSDL and WADL
- APIgee
- A commercial product with some documentation features
- 3scale
- A commercial product with some documentation features
- miredot
- Commercial REST API documentation generator
- Java specific
