Whats Up Doc

Generate API docs and insert them into your project's README with practically no effort. Document your code with comment blocks and whatsupdoc does the rest.

How to Use | Tags | Customization | Examples | Thanks

How to Use

Step 1

Document your code with blocks like this.

/**
* @name getSome
* @description Get the sum of two numbers.
* @param {Number} a the first number
* @param {Number} [b=3.14] the second number
* @return {Number} 
* @public
*/
getSome: function (a, b) {
    if (b === undefined) {
        b = 3.14;
    }
    return a + b;
}

Step 2

The clarity and maintainability of your code has undoubtably already improved, but if you want, you can run this from your terminal.

./whatsupdoc .

This will find documentation blocks in JavaScript files in the current directory and add them to the end of README.md.

Step 3

Watch the adoption rate of your beautiful code skyrocket because you made it easy for people to use.

Tags

The supported tags are listed here for quick reference. If you'd prefer, you can skip to the examples and learn by trying.

@class
@description
@function
@method
@name
@param
@private
@return

---

Simple Text Tags

These tags should be followed by some text. If needed, the text can span multiple lines.

@description

Do you really need a description of description?

@name

The name of the method, function, or class being documented. You can also use @method, @function, or @class.

---

Complex Tags

These tags should be followed by one or more of the following optional elements in this order:

• An indication of the type of value, wrapped in braces. These don't have to be real types, but here are some suggestions.

  • {String}
  • {Number}
  • {String/Number}
  • {String[]}
  • {DonkeyCake}

• The name of the parameter we're describing. You can also indicate a parameter is optional and its default value if you're so inclined. Name doesn't make sense for @return, since you don't know who's handling it, but it is here for uniformity.

  • foo
  • [foo]
  • [foo=42]

• A description of what the heck this thing is. This can span multiple lines if you are particularly loquacious.

@param

A parameter passed to the function. See above for options.

@return

The value returned from the function. See above for options.

---

Privacy Flag

If you want to document blocks for your own convenience, but not have them show up in the generated API docs, use @private.

/**
* @description This block won't show up in the generated docs.
* @private
*/

Customization

If you don't want the docs added to the end of your README, you can specify where they'll be inserted by adding

<!--- whatsupdoc-start --><!--- whatsupdoc-end -->

You can customize options by including a .whatsupdocrc in the directory being scanned. The example below represents the defaults.

{
    "exclude": ["node_modules", "test"],
    "outputFile": "README.md",
    "blockTemplate": "block-template.txt"
}

Similarly, if you don't like the default output, you can create your own block-template.txt in the scanned directory. It will be compiled by Swig and used to generate you documentation. The glossary below describes the values that may appear for each documentation block.

• description - the description of the block
• name - the name of the block
• params - an Array of param Objects for the block; Each param may have the properties:
  • default - default value
  • description - description of parameter
  • name - name of parameter
  • optional - true/false if the parameter is optional
  • type - type(s) expected for parameter
• returns - Object describing what the block returns. The returns Object may have the properties:
  • description - description of returned value
  • type - type(s) to be returned

Examples

/**
* @name someFoo
* @description Do the foo stuff.
* @param {String} foo the foo
* @param {Boolean} [bar=false] some bar
* @return {Object} asdf something is returned
*/
 
/**
* @name getStringLength
* @description Returns the number of characters
* in a string.
* @param {String} str the string to be examined - Oh, yeah.  I
* forgot to mention that any description can span multiple
* lines.
* @return {Number} 
*/
 
/**
* @description This one doesn't have much info.
* @param foo
* @param [bar]
*/
 
/**
* @description This is an internal function that
* we don't want included in the API docs.
* @param {String[]} foo an Array of Strings
* @param {Boolean} [bar=false] another cryptic option
* @private
*/

Thanks

Thank you for taking the time to check out whatsupdoc. If you have any comments or suggestions, please reach out.