Source code documentation tool javascript

Code documentation is a process by which a programmer documents his or her code. It is a well-known term among engineers. Many programmers seem to be baffled by code documentation and try to evade it as much as possible. The lack of purpose to write code documentation leads to poor code readability and hard maintenance for other team members.

Code documentation is different from project documentation as it mainly aims at how the system works. Even though there are multiple reasons for writing code documentation, many programmers tend to skip them. Even with all the above benefits, documentation, on the whole, is a time-consuming process. To enable faster documentation process and style consistency, you should use code documentation tools. The tools will make you a better documenter and an awesome coder!

If you are reading this, you must be thinking how a social project broadcasting can be a tool for code documentation? By doing this, you will be able to easily allow your team members access to important sections of the project. There are multiple benefits for using Livecoding as a tool to document your code.

Some of them are mentioned below:. Doxygen is a great tool for generating documentation from source code. It can also be used to generate output in multiple formats, including Unix man pages, PostScript, etc. The biggest advantage of using Doxygen is that you will have consistency throughout your source code documentation. It can also help you to generate code structure using the undocumented source files. All you need to do is configure it accordingly.

Check out the stream here. Sphinx is a popular documentation tool for the programmers. Sphinx is ideal for developers who want to organize their documentation. It can be used for both project documentation and code documentation.

Some features of Sphinx include extensive cross-references, multiple output formats, automatic indices, extension support, etc. Here are a few of them:. JSDoc is copyright c present Michael Mathews micmath gmail. Skip to content. Star Branches Tags. Could not load branches. Could not load tags. Latest commit. Git stats 2, commits. It may look weird to you now, but types are actually a thing in JavaScript: there are "stock" JavaScript types with their infamous coercion and strong types with TypeScript.

TypeScript is a slightly advanced topic , but when you define types with JSDoc in the documentation you're using a touch of "strong types". We can add annotations for both like so:. Adding JSDoc documentation has a side effect.

Auto completion will improve in your IDE and you'll get real-time hints :. Moreover, the editor will scream if you try to pass the wrong kind of parameters :. The details for auto completion may vary from product to product, being fond of Webstorm I'm a bit biased here, of course you can get similar results with Vscode and friends.

It might sound crazy, but adding JSDoc annotations before writing the code, not after, is another thing you can do. And it has two nice outcomes. First, you will probably write better, simpler code because of the idea of it you formed while writing the documentation.

Also, you'll choose better names for parameters unlike my "data" , variables, and functions too. Give it a shot and let me know if it changes your workflow! JSDoc has a lot more tags.

The "author" annotation for example is useful when you need to blame someone's else code. Here's an example:. Another useful tag is "return" or "returns" for describing the return value of a function. Here's a function which returns nothing i. JSDoc works beautifully when you specify types in the doc , but you're also free to omit them. However by doing so you'll loose all the benefits. So that's all with JSDoc? Not yet! NET constructor overload, including a link to the method summary page listing other overloads.

Also includes dependencies if documenting a Sql Server database. Live Samples. X will use the content of Javascript source comments where available; both JsDoc and XML format source comments are supported.

Use returns, param and type comment tags to identify function, parameter and field types to improve the quality of the automatically generated usage sections.

You can also author content in Document! X Content Files if you would like to maintain some or all of the database documentation content outside of the source code.

In combination with, or as an alternative to authoring content in JSDoc or Xml format source code comments, create and maintain documentation content using the Document! X Content File Editor. X will automatically use any JsDoc format source code comments and use them in the generated output. X will automatically use any Microsoft xml format source code comments and use them in the generated output. A specific designer is included in the Content File Editor to make creating examples quick and easy.

Paste example code or use existing code files or named regions within them as your source. X will automatically generate a Syntax and Usage section in member pages. Regular Javascript syntax, or a specific syntax for jQuery libraries and widgets is output as appropriate. X automatically generates object relationship diagrams for your classes. Specific relationships can be ignored where necessary e.