Docchi

Docchi parses comments in JavaScript code and outputs the structure and context of the comments in any particular format, JSDoc is the default. It traverses the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) to determine the context of a comment. Basically it's glue code between the AST parser Acorn, and the JSDoc parser Doctrine.

Get it from npm:

$ npm install -g docchi

Usage

Docchi operates over stdio. Running Docchi on its own source code, and outputting the result to docs.json:

$ docchi < lib/index.js > docs.json

Or you could use it programmatically, as part of a Node-based build script:

import fs from 'fs'
import docchi from 'docchi'

// Parse a string or a buffer.
let doc = docchi.parse(fs.readFileSync('example.js'))

// An array of parsed comments matched with their contexts.
let output = doc.output()

The output method accepts 2 arguments, a function that accepts a comment and returns anything, and an options object to pass to the custom function or the built-in parser, Doctrine.

Example

This code documentation:

/**
 * This is a **Foo** class.
 */
class Foo {
    /**
     * This is the constructor.
     *
     * @param {Object} options
     */
    constructor (options) { ... }
}

Gets outputted as:

[{ comment: { description: '<p>This is a <strong>Foo</strong> class.</p>', tags: [] },
   context: { location: { start: [Object], end: [Object] },
              name: 'Foo', type: 'class' }
 },
 { comment: { description: '<p>This is the constructor.</p>', tags: [Object] },
   context: { location: { start: [Object], end: [Object] },
              type: 'constructor', target: 'Foo' }
}]

Descriptions are rendered into HTML using CommonMark. Use { render: false } in the options for output to turn it off.

The default JSDoc parser will only consider block comments that start with /**.

License

This software is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.