/jsdoc

An automatic documentation generator for JavaScript.

Primary LanguageJavaScriptOtherNOASSERTION

JSDoc 3

An inline API documentation processor for JavaScript. JSDoc 3 is intended to be an upgrade to JsDoc Toolkit (JSDoc 2).

Pull Requesters: Please read HOW_TO_CONTRIBUTE.md

Installation

Download a copy of JSDoc 3 from the official Git Hub repository here: https://github.com/jsdoc3/jsdoc

To test that jsdoc is working, change your working directory to the jsdoc folder and run the following command on Windows:

jsdoc -T

... or on a Max OSX or *nix platform:

./jsdoc -T

If you can't get the short-form commands to work, try invoking Java directly:

java -cp lib/js.jar org.mozilla.javascript.tools.shell.Main \
-modules node_modules -modules rhino_modules -modules . \
jsdoc.js -T

Usage

This example assumes that your working directory is the jsdoc application base directory:

./jsdoc yourSourceCodeFile.js

For help regarding the supported commandline options use the --help option.

./jsdoc --help

Generated documentation will appear in the folder specified by the --destination option, or in a folder named "out" by default.

Dependencies

JSDoc 3 utilises the Mozilla Rhino engine, which requires Java. JSDoc 3 is known to work with version 1.6.0_24 of Java.

JSDoc 3 uses advanced features in the Rhino application which are only available in or after the 1.7 release 3. A copy of this version of Rhino is included in JSDoc so this is not normally an issue that the user needs to be concerned with. However, in rare cases, users may have their Java CLASSPATH configured to override that included Rhino and point to some older version of Rhino instead. If this is the case, simply correct the CLASSPATH to remove the older Rhino.

The version of rhino distributed with JSDoc3 can be found here: https://github.com/jannon/rhino

Debugging

Rhino is not always very friendly when it comes to reporting errors in JavaScript. Luckily it comes with a full-on debugger included that can be much more useful than a simple stack trace. To invoke JSDoc with the debugger try the following command:

jsdoc --debug

or the long form version:

$ java -classpath lib/js.jar \
org.mozilla.javascript.tools.debugger.Main -debug \
-modules node_modules -modules rhino_modules -modules . \
jsdoc.js \
your/script.js

Note: --debug must be the first argument to the short form command

This will open a debugging window. Choose "Break on Exceptions" from the "Debug" menu, then press the "Run" button. If there is an error, you should see exactly where it is in the source code.

See Also

Project Documentation: http://usejsdoc.org/ (under development)
Project Documentation Source: https://github.com/micmath/micmath.github.com
JSDoc User's Group: http://groups.google.com/group/jsdoc-users
JSDoc3 Ant Task https://github.com/jannon/jsdoc3-ant-task
Project Annoncements: http://twitter.com/jsdoc3

License

JSDoc 3 is copyright (c) 2011 Michael Mathews micmath@gmail.com

See file "LICENSE.md" in this distribution for more details about terms of use.