JsDuck
======
Simple JavaScript Duckumentation generator.
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(\___ )=='-'
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JsDuck aims to be a better documentation generator for [ExtJS][].
While it tries to do everything that [ext-doc][] does, it isn't
satisfied with it and aims to make your life much easier.
Basically JsDuck thinks that the following doc-comment really sucks:
/**
* @class Ext.form.TextField
* @extends Ext.form.Field
*
Basic text field. Can be used as a direct replacement for traditional
* text inputs, or as the base class for more sophisticated input controls
* (like {@link Ext.form.TextArea} and {@link Ext.form.ComboBox}).
* Validation
* The validation procedure is described in the documentation for
* {@link #validateValue}.
* Alter Validation Behavior
* Validation behavior for each field can be configured:
*
* {@link Ext.form.TextField#invalidText invalidText}
:
* the default validation message to show if any validation step above does
* not provide a message when invalid
* {@link Ext.form.TextField#maskRe maskRe}
:
* filter out keystrokes before any validation occurs
* {@link Ext.form.TextField#stripCharsRe stripCharsRe}
:
* filter characters after being typed in, but before being validated
*
*
* @constructor Creates a new TextField
* @param {Object} config Configuration options
*
* @xtype textfield
*/
Ext.form.TextField = Ext.extend(Ext.form.Field, {
Not quite so readable is it? The source of ExtJS is filled with
comments just like that, and when you use ext-doc, you too are forced
to write such comments.
JsDuck does not like it. Although it can handle comments like this,
it would like that you wrote comments like that instead:
/**
* Basic text field. Can be used as a direct replacement for traditional
* text inputs, or as the base class for more sophisticated input controls
* (like {@link Ext.form.TextArea} and {@link Ext.form.ComboBox}).
*
* Validation
* ----------
*
* The validation procedure is described in the documentation for
* {@link #validateValue}.
*
* Alter Validation Behavior
* -------------------------
*
* Validation behavior for each field can be configured:
*
* - `{@link Ext.form.TextField#invalidText invalidText}` :
* the default validation message to show if any validation step above
* does not provide a message when invalid
* - `{@link Ext.form.TextField#maskRe maskRe}` :
* filter out keystrokes before any validation occurs
* - `{@link Ext.form.TextField#stripCharsRe stripCharsRe}` :
* filter characters after being typed in, but before being validated
*
* @xtype textfield
*/
Ext.form.TextField = Ext.extend(Ext.form.Field, {
As you can see, JsDuck supports formatting comments with friendly
[Markdown][] syntax. And it can infer several things from the code
(like @class and @extends in this case), so you don't have to repeat
yourself. Also the constructor documentation is inherited from parent
class - so you don't have to restate that it takes a config object
again.
That's basically it. Have fun.
[ExtJS]: http://www.sencha.com/products/js/
[ext-doc]: http://ext-doc.org/
[Markdown]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
Getting it
----------
Standard rubygems install should do:
$ [sudo] gem install jsduck
For hacking fork it from github.
$ git clone git://github.com/nene/jsduck.git
$ cd jsduck
$ rake --tasks
JsDuck depends on [json][], [RDiscount][], and [parallel][] plus [RSpec][] for tests.
[json]: http://flori.github.com/json/
[RDiscount]: https://github.com/rtomayko/rdiscount
[parallel]: https://github.com/grosser/parallel
[RSpec]: http://rspec.info/
Usage
-----
Just call it from command line with output directory and a list of
JavaScript files:
$ jsduck --verbose --output some/dir your/project/*.js
To specify a lot of files you should probably create a script that
generates a file list and passes it through `xargs` to `jsduck`.
For example to generate documentation for ExtJS:
$ find ext-3.3.1/src/ -name '*.js' | egrep -v 'locale/|test/|adapter/' | xargs jsduck -v -o output/
The `--verbose` flag creates a lot of output, but at least you will
see that something is happening.
Here's how the resulting documentation will look:
* [JsDuck generated documentation](http://triin.net/temp/jsduck/)
* [Official ExtJS documentation](http://dev.sencha.com/deploy/dev/docs/) (for comparison)
Documentation
-------------
Overview of documenting your code with JsDuck:
* [Class](https://github.com/nene/jsduck/wiki/Class)
* [Constructor](https://github.com/nene/jsduck/wiki/Constructor)
* [Config options](https://github.com/nene/jsduck/wiki/Cfg)
* [Properties](https://github.com/nene/jsduck/wiki/Property)
* [Methods](https://github.com/nene/jsduck/wiki/Method)
* [Events](https://github.com/nene/jsduck/wiki/Event)
More details:
* [List of supported @tags][tags]
* [List of doc-comment errors(?) found in ExtJS source][errors]
[tags]: https://github.com/nene/jsduck/wiki/List-of-supported-@tags
[errors]: https://github.com/nene/jsduck/wiki/List-of-doc-comment-errors(%3F)-found-in-ExtJS-source
Features and differences from ext-doc
-------------------------------------
JsDuck has some strong opinions, so some things are intentionally
missing.
* Support for Markdown in comments
* More things inferred from the code
* No XML configuration file, just command line options
* Class documentation header doesn't separately list Package and Class -
these are IMHO redundant.
* Class documentation header doesn't duplicate toolbar buttons -
another redundancy
* Ext.Component has a component icon too, not only its descendants
Missing features and TODO
-------------------------
* Search, not just searching from official ExtJS documentation.
* Support for custom @tags. Ext-doc supports this, I personally have
never used this feature, so I'm thinking it's not really needed.
Copying
-------
JsDuck is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3.
JsDuck was developed by [Rene Saarsoo](http://triin.net).
Changelog
---------
* 0.3 - Performance improvements
* Significant peed improvements - most importantly utilizing
multiple CPU-s (if available) to speed things up. On my 4-core
box JsDuck is now even faster than ext-doc.
* Printing of performance info in verbose mode
* Support for comma-first coding style
* Few other fixes to JavaScript parsing
* 0.2 - most features of ext-doc supported.
* Links from documentation to source code
* Syntax highlighting of code examples
* Tree of parent classes
* List of subclasses
* 0.1 - initial version.