styledocco

StyleDocco

StyleDocco generates documentation and style guide documents from your stylesheets.

Stylesheet comments will be parsed through Markdown and displayed in a generated HTML document. You can write HTML code prefixed with 4 spaces or between code fences (```) in your comments, and StyleDocco renders a preview with the styles applied, and shows the example HTML code.

An important philosophy of StyleDocco is to introduce as little custom syntax as possible, maintaining the stylesheet comments readable and useful even without StyleDocco.

Suggestions, feature requests and bug reports are very welcome, either at GitHub or on Twitter (@jacobrask).

Installation

StyleDocco requires Node.js. After installing Node.js, run npm install -g styledocco or clone this repository.

StyleDocco is free software, released under the MIT license.

Usage

styledocco [options] [INPUT]

StyleDocco will automatically compile any SASS, SCSS, Less or Stylus files before they are applied to the page. You can also enter a custom preprocessor command if you want to pass custom parameters to the preprocessor.

If your project includes a README file, it will be used as the base for an index.html. StyleDocco will also add some default styles to your documentation, but they are easy to modify to make it fit with your project.

Options

• --name, -n Name of the project (required)
• --out, -o Output directory (default: "docs")
• --resources, -s Directory with files to customize the documentation output. StyleDocco defaults will be used for any required file not found in this directory. (optional)
• --preprocessor Custom preprocessor command. (optional) (ex: --preprocessor "scss --load-path=deps/")
• --include Include specified CSS and/or JavaScript files in the previews. (optional) (ex: --include mysite.css --include app.js)
• --verbose Show log messages when generating the documentation. (default: false)

•                 Directory containing the stylesheets to document.
  

Usage examples

Generate documentation for My Project in the docs folder, from the files in the css directory.

styledocco -n "My Project" css

Generate documentation for My Project in the mydocs folder, from source files in the styles folder. Use the Less binary in ~/bin/lessc.

styledocco -n "My Project" -o mydocs -s mydocs --preprocessor "~/bin/lessc" styles

Syntax

/* Provides extra visual weight and identifies the primary action in a set of buttons.

    <button class="btn primary">Primary</button> */
.btn.primary {
    background: blue;
    color: white;
}

Would display the description, a rendered button as well as the example HTML code. The CSS will be applied to the preview.

See the examples folder for more in-depth examples.

Tips and tricks

• Put some whitespace before a comment block to exclude it from the documentation.
• Level 1 headings will automatically create a new section in the documentation.
• Add :hover, :focus, etc as class names in example code and the pseudo class styles will be applied in the preview.

Acknowledgements

A lot of the heavy lifting in StyleDocco is done by the excellent Marked module by Christopher Jeffrey. The original Docco by Jeremy Ashkenas and Knyle Style Sheets have also been sources of inspiration for StyleDocco.