CoffeeDoc is a simple API documentation generator for CoffeeScript. It reads python-style docstrings in your CoffeeScript class and function definitions, passes them through Markdown and outputs the result as easy to read HTML.
Thanks to apgwoz, CoffeeDoc can also generate wiki pages for Github!
CoffeeDoc can also return your documentation as JSON, so you can run it through an external documentation system such as Sphinx.
CoffeeDoc is inspired by the excellent Docco, and is intended for projects that require more structured API documentation.
The docstring convention CoffeeDoc uses is inspired by Python, and looks like this:
###
# CoffeeDoc example documentation #
This is a module-level docstring, and will be displayed at the top of the module documentation.
Documentation generated by [CoffeeDoc](http://github.com/omarkhan/coffeedoc)
###
class MyClass extends Superclass
###
This docstring documents MyClass. It can include *Markdown* syntax,
which will be converted to html.
###
constructor: (@args) ->
### Constructor documentation goes here. ###
method: (args) ->
### This is a method of MyClass ###
myFunc = (arg1, arg2, args...) ->
###
This function will be documented by CoffeeDoc
###
doSomething()The documentation generated from the above script can be seen
here. For a
more interesting example, here is the result of running coffeedoc against
src/coffeedoc.coffee.
CoffeeDoc requires Node.js, CoffeeScript, eco, and optimist. Install using npm with the following command:
sudo npm install -g coffeedoc
The -g option installs CoffeeDoc globally, adding the coffeedoc executable to your PATH. If you would rather install locally, omit the -g option.
You can also install from source using cake. From the source directory, run:
sudo cake install
CoffeeDoc can be run from the command line:
Usage: coffeedoc [options] [targets]
Options:
--output, -o Set output directory [default: "docs"]
--parser Parser to use. Available parsers: commonjs, requirejs [default: "commonjs"]
--renderer Renderer to use. Available renderers: html, gfm, json [default: "html"]
--stdout Direct all output to stdout instead of files [boolean]
--ignore, -i Files or directories to ignore
--help, -h Show this help
--hide-private Do not document methods beginning with an underscore [boolean]
If [targets] is a directory, CoffeeDoc will recursively document all .coffee
files found under that directory.
If you wish to document several modules, make sure you generate all
the docs with a single command -- this ensures that they will all appear in the
index.html file.
Markdown uses # characters for headers, e.g.
# Header 1
## Header 2
### Header 3
#### Header 4
##### Header 5
###### Header 6
As using a sequence of 3 or more # characters within a CoffeeScript block
comment would end the comment block, CoffeeDoc allows for the \# escape
sequence in docstrings. So instead of ### Header, use \#\#\# Header or
##\# Header. Ugly, but it works.
CoffeeDoc uses the CoffeeScript parser to generate a parse tree for the given source files. It then extracts the relevant information from the parse tree: class and function names, class member functions, function argument lists and docstrings.
Docstrings are defined as the first herecomment block following the class or function definition. Note that regular single line comments will be ignored.
The resulting documentation information is then passed to an eco template to generate the html output.
- Doctests
CoffeeDoc is © 2012 Omar Khan, released under the MIT licence. Use it, fork it.