jsdoc-to-markdown

What is jsdoc-to-markdown?

The jsdoc-to-markdown npm package is a tool that generates markdown documentation from JSDoc comments in your JavaScript code. It is useful for creating comprehensive and readable documentation for your projects.

What are jsdoc-to-markdown's main functionalities?

Generate Markdown Documentation

This feature allows you to generate markdown documentation from JSDoc comments in your JavaScript files. The code sample demonstrates how to use jsdoc-to-markdown to read JSDoc comments from JavaScript files in the 'src' directory and output the generated markdown to 'docs/api.md'.

const jsdoc2md = require('jsdoc-to-markdown');
const fs = require('fs');

const inputFiles = 'src/**/*.js';
const outputFile = 'docs/api.md';

jsdoc2md.render({ files: inputFiles })
  .then(output => fs.writeFileSync(outputFile, output));

Customizing the Output

This feature allows you to customize the output of the generated markdown documentation using a template. The code sample shows how to use a custom template to format the documentation for a specific module.

const jsdoc2md = require('jsdoc-to-markdown');
const fs = require('fs');

const inputFiles = 'src/**/*.js';
const outputFile = 'docs/api.md';

const template = `{{#module name="myModule"}}{{>docs}}{{/module}}`;

jsdoc2md.render({ files: inputFiles, template: template })
  .then(output => fs.writeFileSync(outputFile, output));

Filtering Output

This feature allows you to filter the output of the generated markdown documentation. The code sample demonstrates how to disable GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM) in the output by setting the 'no-gfm' option to true.

const jsdoc2md = require('jsdoc-to-markdown');
const fs = require('fs');

const inputFiles = 'src/**/*.js';
const outputFile = 'docs/api.md';

jsdoc2md.render({ files: inputFiles, 'no-gfm': true })
  .then(output => fs.writeFileSync(outputFile, output));

Other packages similar to jsdoc-to-markdown

documentation

The 'documentation' package is another tool for generating documentation from JSDoc comments. It offers a command-line interface and supports various output formats, including HTML and JSON. Compared to jsdoc-to-markdown, 'documentation' provides more flexibility in terms of output formats but may require more configuration.

jsdoc

The 'jsdoc' package is a popular tool for generating HTML documentation from JSDoc comments. It is highly configurable and supports a wide range of tags and plugins. While 'jsdoc' focuses on generating HTML documentation, jsdoc-to-markdown is specialized in generating markdown documentation, making it more suitable for projects that prefer markdown.

esdoc

The 'esdoc' package is a documentation generator for JavaScript that supports ES6+ syntax. It generates HTML documentation and includes features like coverage reports and test integration. Compared to jsdoc-to-markdown, 'esdoc' is more focused on modern JavaScript syntax and provides additional features like coverage reports.

README

jsdoc-to-markdown

Generates markdown documentation from jsdoc annotated source code. Useful for injecting API docs into project README files.

Synopsis

1. Document your code using valid jsdoc comments.

/**
 * A quite wonderful function.
 * @param {object} - privacy gown
 * @param {object} - security
 * @returns {survival}
 */
function protection (cloak, dagger) {}

2. Run a command.

$ jsdoc2md example.js

3. Get markdown output.

## protection(cloak, dagger) ⇒ <code>survival</code>
A quite wonderful function.

**Kind**: global function  

| Param  | Type                | Description  |
| ------ | ------------------- | ------------ |
| cloak  | <code>object</code> | privacy gown |
| dagger | <code>object</code> | security     |

Install

$ npm i -g jsdoc-to-markdown@^2.0.0-alpha

See also

• API documentation
• The wiki for example output, FAQs, tutorials, plugins, use with gulp/grunt etc.

---

© 2014-16 Lloyd Brookes [e-mail].