What?

• This is a Research project *

Automatic documentation / descriptions of live javascript objects in several formats

The idea of this tool is to explore and describe the structure of given unknown javascript object

t can run anywhere thanks to browserify: we can run it in node, browser, rhino, nashhorn, etc

output implementation are plugins - there are now several different type of outputs (jsdoc, jsonschema, typescript descriptions ) but others can be implemented as funcions

Sceniarios

• you are using an undocumented library or a library poorly documented in a readme. But you areprograming in a intellisence editor and you wnat autocomplete to work faster - so you use this tool against the library's root object.

• you are for some reason programming in a new javascript environment like rhino and don't know nothing about its globals or what's available. Run the tool agains the global context (this) to explore it

install

npm install --save js-doc-autogen

Using it in node.js

var docgen = require('js-doc-autogen')
var context = {
    someCoolLibraryWithoutFormalDocumentation: require('cool-foo')
}
var config = {
    target: context,
    outputImplementation: 'jsonschema',
    excludeNames: ['something.very.private'],
    levelMax:6
}
var buffer = docgen.main(config)
var s = buffer.join('\n')

Using it in the browser to examine DOM

(but you could examine any object of a n on documented library)

<script src="../dist/bundle.js"></script>
<script>
var docgen = require('js-doc-autogen')
var context = {
    document: document,
    window: window,
    foo: {p: 9}
}
var config = {
    target: context,
    mainModule: 'html',
    outputImplementation: 'shortjsdoc',
    excludeNames: ['document.doctype']
    ,levelMax: 4
}
var buffer = docgen.main(config)
var jsdoc = buffer.join('\n')
var jsdoc = '/*\n'+jsdoc+'\n*/'
window.jsdoc = jsdoc
console.log(jsdoc)
// copy(s)
console.log('jsdoc available in variable jsdoc. Execute copy(jsdoc) in the console to copy jsdoc to clipboard. ')
</script>

Configuration properties

• target: the target object to document. It will be examine ant if it contains circular dependencies probably it could fail. Also the object coul dbe unusable / contaminated after using the tool
• mainModule: a name to put to the root output object that contains everything
• outputImplementation: could be any of: shortjsdoc, jsonschema

jsdoc output example

The following is documentation automatically generated from globals of different js implementations like node, browser, rhino, nashorn, etc

DEMO

generate bundle and run it in browser

browserify -r .:js-doc-autogen -r ./src/output-shortjsdoc.js:./output-shortjsdoc -r underscore -d > dist/bundle.js

firefox example/browser-example.html

You will see a jsdoc fragment in the console.

Other files

• TODO
• Changelist