react-docgen

What is react-docgen?

The react-docgen npm package is a CLI and toolbox that helps you to extract information from React components, such as prop types, default props, and component descriptions, by analyzing the source code. It is particularly useful for generating documentation automatically and can be integrated into build processes.

What are react-docgen's main functionalities?

Extracting component metadata

This feature allows you to extract metadata from a React component source code. The 'parse' function takes the source code as a string and returns an object containing the component's metadata, such as its name, props, default props, and description.

const reactDocgen = require('react-docgen');
const componentInfo = reactDocgen.parse(source);

Handling different component definitions

React-docgen can handle different ways of defining React components, such as class components, functional components, and higher-order components. By using different resolvers, you can extract metadata from various component definitions.

const reactDocgen = require('react-docgen');
const componentInfo = reactDocgen.parse(source, reactDocgen.resolver.findAllComponentDefinitions);

Custom handlers

You can add custom handlers to the parsing process to extract or modify the information in a way that suits your specific needs. This allows for extensibility and customization of the metadata extraction process.

const reactDocgen = require('react-docgen');
const customHandler = (documentation, path) => { /* custom logic */ };
const componentInfo = reactDocgen.parse(source, null, [customHandler]);

Other packages similar to react-docgen

prop-types

The prop-types package is used for runtime type checking for React props and similar objects. While it doesn't generate documentation, it serves a related purpose in defining and documenting the types of props a component can receive.

storybook

Storybook is an open-source tool for developing UI components in isolation for React, Vue, and Angular. It provides a sandbox to build UIs in isolation so you can develop hard-to-reach states and edge cases. It includes features for documenting components, which can be seen as an alternative to react-docgen's documentation generation capabilities.

typedoc

TypeDoc is a documentation generator for TypeScript projects. It operates under similar principles to react-docgen but is focused on TypeScript and can generate documentation from TypeScript annotations and comments.

jsdoc

JSDoc is a markup language used to annotate JavaScript source code files. Using comments containing JSDoc, you can add documentation describing the application programming interface (API) of your JavaScript code. Unlike react-docgen, which is React-specific, JSDoc is applicable to any JavaScript code.