documentation

What is documentation?

The 'documentation' package is a tool for generating documentation from JavaScript code. It supports various output formats and can be integrated into build processes to automate the creation of documentation.

What are documentation's main functionalities?

Generate HTML Documentation

This command generates HTML documentation from the JavaScript files located in the 'src' directory and outputs it to the 'docs' directory. It is useful for creating a visually accessible format of your code's documentation.

documentation build src/** -f html -o docs

Generate Markdown Documentation

This command generates Markdown documentation from the JavaScript files in the 'src' directory and outputs it to a single 'docs.md' file. Markdown is a versatile format that can be easily shared and integrated with various platforms.

documentation build src/** -f md -o docs.md

Serve Documentation Locally

This command starts a local server to serve the documentation generated from the JavaScript files in the 'src' directory. It allows developers to view and interact with the documentation in a web browser during development.

documentation serve src/**

Generate JSON Documentation

This command generates JSON documentation from the JavaScript files in the 'src' directory and outputs it to a 'docs.json' file. JSON format is useful for further processing or integration with other tools.

documentation build src/** -f json -o docs.json

Other packages similar to documentation

jsdoc

JSDoc is a popular tool for generating documentation from JavaScript source code. It is similar to 'documentation' in that it parses comments in the code to produce documentation. However, JSDoc is more widely used and has a larger community, which can be beneficial for support and finding resources.

typedoc

TypeDoc is a documentation generator specifically for TypeScript projects. It is similar to 'documentation' but is tailored for TypeScript, providing better support for TypeScript-specific features. It is a good choice if you are working primarily with TypeScript.

esdoc

ESDoc is a documentation generator for ECMAScript, similar to 'documentation'. It offers features like test coverage and linting for documentation comments. ESDoc is particularly focused on ES6 and beyond, making it a good choice for modern JavaScript projects.

README

documentation

A documentation generation system that's beautiful by default, flexible across formats and styles, and powerful enough to support JSDoc's advanced syntax.

ES5 and ES6 support of JavaScript, with support for other transpilers a possibility

Using babel, we have support for a wide range of ES6 & ES7 features, as well as Flow type annotations.

Powerful inference

By statically analyzing your JavaScript code, documentation.js can write many parts of your documentation for you. It can infer parameter names and types, class membership, return values from Flow types, and lots more.

Support for C++

You can use the --polyglot mode of documentationjs to document native node.js modules in JSDoc within the C++ code that implements the feature.

Support for following dependency trees

Using module-deps, documentation can crawl require() graphs - pointing it to your app's main file will find all referenced files and include all of their documentation.

GitHub Integration

The --github option automatically permalinks documentation to the exact sections of code it refers to in a GitHub repository.

Gulp integration

The gulp-documentation project lets you run documentation as a Gulp build task.

Documentation

• Getting_Started: start here

• Usage: how to use documentation.js

• Recipes: tricks for writing effective JSDoc docs

• Node API: documentation.js's self-generated documentation

• FAQ

• Theming HTML: tips for theming documentation output in HTML

• See also: a list of projects similar to documentation.js

User Guide

Globally install documentation using the npm package manager:

$ npm install -g documentation

This installs a command called documentation in your path, that you can point at JSDoc-annotated source code to generate human-readable documentation. First run documentation with the -h option for help:

$ documentation -h
Usage: documentation <command> [options]

Options:
  --lint             check output for common style and uniformity mistakes
                                                                       [boolean]
  -t, --theme        specify a theme: this must be a valid theme module
  -p, --private      generate documentation tagged as private          [boolean]
  --version          Show version number                               [boolean]
  --name             project name. by default, inferred from package.json
  --project-version  project version. by default, inferred from package.json
  --shallow          shallow mode turns off dependency resolution, only
                     processing the specified files (or the main script
                     specified in package.json)       [boolean] [default: false]
  --polyglot         polyglot mode turns off dependency resolution and enables
                     multi-language support. use this to document c++  [boolean]
  -g, --github       infer links to github in documentation            [boolean]
  -o, --output       output location. omit for stdout, otherwise is a filename
                     for single-file outputs and a directory name for multi-file
                     outputs like html                       [default: "stdout"]
  -c, --config       configuration file. an array defining explicit sort order
  -h, --help         Show help                                         [boolean]
  -f, --format                 [choices: "json", "md", "html"] [default: "json"]

Examples:
  documentation foo.js  parse documentation in a given file

Contributing

We have plenty of issues that we'd love help with.

• Robust and complete JSDoc support, including typedefs.
• Strong support for HTML and Markdown output
• Documentation coverage, statistics, and validation

documentation is an OPEN Open Source Project. This means that:

Individuals making significant and valuable contributions are given commit-access to the project to contribute as they see fit. This project is more like an open wiki than a standard guarded open source project.

Changelog

3.0.3

• Infer typedefs from Flow type aliases. Fixes #227
• Fix type-annotated rest expressions, raised in #230