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Dart documentation generator

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Use dart doc to generate HTML documentation for your Dart package.

For information about contributing to the dartdoc project, see the contributor docs.

For issues/details related to the hosted Dart SDK API docs, see dart-lang/api.dart.dev.

Installation

The dart tool, with the dart doc command, is part of the Dart SDK.

Generating docs

Run dart doc . from the root directory of a package. You must first run dart pub get or flutter pub get and your package must analyze without errors with dart analyze or flutter analyze as appropriate. Here is an example of dartdoc documenting itself:

$ dart pub get
...
$ dart doc .
Documenting dartdoc...
...
Initialized dartdoc with 766 libraries in 63.9 seconds
Generating docs for library dartdoc from package:dartdoc/dartdoc.dart...
Validating docs...
no issues found
Documented 1 public library in 17.9 seconds
Success! Docs generated into <path to dartdoc>/doc/api

By default, the documentation is generated to the doc/api directory as static HTML files.

To view the generated documentation, you must load them with an HTTP server. To learn more, follow the Viewing docs guide.

Run dart help doc to see the available command-line options.

Viewing docs

To enable navigation and search, the generated docs must be served with an HTTP server.

An easy way to run an HTTP server locally is to use package:dhttpd. For example:

$ dart pub global activate dhttpd
$ dart pub global run dhttpd --path doc/api

To then read the generated docs in your browser, open the link that dhttpd outputs, usually http://localhost:8080.

Link structure

dartdoc produces static files with a predictable link structure.

index.html                          # homepage
index.json                          # machine-readable index
library-name/                       # : is turned into a - e.g. dart:core => dart-core
  ClassName-class.html              # "homepage" for a class (and enum)
  ClassName/
    ClassName.html                  # constructor
    ClassName.namedConstructor.html # named constructor
    method.html
    property.html
  CONSTANT.html
  property.html
  top-level-function.html

File names are case-sensitive.

Writing docs

To learn about writing documentation comments, check out the Effective Dart: Documentation guide.

The guide covers formatting, linking, markup, and general best practices when authoring doc comments for Dart with dart doc.

Excluding from documentation

dart doc will not generate documentation for a Dart element and its children that have the @nodoc tag in the documentation comment.

Advanced features

dartdoc_options.yaml

Creating a file named dartdoc_options.yaml at the top of your package can change how Dartdoc generates docs.

An example (not necessarily recommended settings):

dartdoc:
  categories:
    "First Category":
      markdown: doc/First.md
      name: Awesome
    "Second Category":
      markdown: doc/Second.md
      name: Great
  categoryOrder: ["First Category", "Second Category"]
  includeExternal: ['bin/unusually_located_library.dart']
  nodoc: ['lib/sekret/*.dart']
  linkTo:
    url: "https://my.dartdocumentationsite.org/dev/%v%"
  showUndocumentedCategories: true
  ignore:
    - ambiguous-doc-reference
  errors:
    - unresolved-doc-reference
  warnings:
    - tool-error

dartdoc_options.yaml fields

In general, paths are relative to the directory of the dartdoc_options.yaml file in which the option is defined, and should be specified as POSIX paths. Dartdoc will convert POSIX paths automatically on Windows. Unrecognized options will be ignored. Supported options:

Unsupported and experimental options:

Categories

You can tag libraries or top level classes, functions, and variables in their documentation with the string {@category YourCategory}. For libraries, that will cause the library to appear in a category when showing the sidebar on the Package and Library pages. For other types of objects, the {@category} will be shown with a link to the category page but only if specified in dartdoc_options.yaml, as above.

/// Here is my library.
///
/// {@category Amazing}
library my_library;

Other category tags and categories.json

A file categories.json will be generated at the top level of the documentation tree with information about categories collected from objects in the source tree. The directives @category, and @subCategory are understood and saved into this json.

As an example, if we document the class Icon in flutter using the following:

/// {@category Basics}
/// {@category Assets and Icons}
/// {@subCategory Information displays}
class Icon extends StatelessWidget {}

that will result in the following json:

  {
    "name": "Icon",
    "qualifiedName": "widgets.Icon",
    "href": "widgets/Icon-class.html",
    "type": "class",
    "categories": [
      "Assets and Icons",
      "Basics"
    ],
    "subcategories": [
      "Information displays"
    ],
  }

Animations

You can specify links to videos inline that will be handled with a simple HTML5 player:

/// This widget is a dancing Linux penguin.
///
/// {@animation name 100 200 http://host.com/path/to/video.mp4}

'name' is user defined, and the numbers are the width and height of the animation in pixels.

Macros

You can specify "macros", i.e. reusable pieces of documentation. For that, first specify a template anywhere in the comments, like:

/// {@template template_name}
/// Some shared docs
/// {@endtemplate}

and then you can insert it via {@macro template_name}, like

/// Some comment
/// {@macro template_name}
/// More comments

Template definitions are currently unscoped -- if dartdoc reads a file containing a template, it can be used in anything dartdoc is currently documenting. This can lead to inconsistent behavior between runs on different packages, especially if different command lines are used for dartdoc. It is recommended to use collision-resistant naming for any macros by including the package name and/or library it is defined in within the name.

Tools

Dartdoc allows you to filter parts of the documentation through an external tool and then include the output of that tool in place of the given input.

First, you have to configure the tools that will be used in the dartdoc_options.yaml file:

dartdoc:
  tools:
    drill:
      command: ["bin/drill.dart"]
      setup_command: ["bin/setup.dart"]
      description: "Puts holes in things."
      compile_args: ["--no-sound-null-safety"]
    echo:
      macos: ['/bin/sh', '-c', 'echo']
      setup_macos: ['/bin/sh', '-c', 'setup.sh']
      linux: ['/bin/sh', '-c', 'echo']
      setup_linux: ['/bin/sh', '-c', 'setup.sh']
      windows: ['C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe', '/c', 'echo']
      setup_windows: ['/bin/sh', '-c', 'setup.sh']
      description: 'Works on everything'

The command tag is used to describe the command executable, and any options that are common among all executions. If the first element of this list is a filename that ends in .dart, then the dart executable will automatically be used to invoke that script. The command defined will be run on all platforms.

If the command is a Dart script, then the first time it is run, a snapshot will be created using the input and first-time arguments as training arguments, and will be run from the snapshot from then on. Note that the Platform.script property will point to the snapshot location during the snapshot runs. You can obtain the original .dart script location in a tool by looking at the TOOL_COMMAND environment variable.

The setup_command tag is used to describe a command executable, and any options, for a command that is run once before running a tool for the first time. If the first element of this list is a filename that ends in .dart, then the dart executable will automatically be used to invoke that script. The setup_command defined will be run on all platforms. If the setup command is a Dart script, then it will be run with the Dart executable, but will not be snapshotted, as it will only be run once.

The macos, linux, and windows tags are used to describe the commands to be run on each of those platforms, and the setup_macos, setup_linux, and setup_windows tags define setup commands for their respective platforms.

The description is just a short description of the tool for use as help text.

Only tools which are configured in the dartdoc_options.yaml file are able to be invoked.

The compile_args tag is used to pass options to the dart compiler when the first run of the tool is being snapshotted.

To use the tools in comment documentation, use the {@tool <name> [<options> ...] [$INPUT]} directive to invoke the tool:

/// {@tool drill --flag --option="value" $INPUT}
/// This is the text that will be sent to the tool as input.
/// {@end-tool}

The $INPUT argument is a special token that will be replaced with the name of a temporary file that the tool needs to read from. It can appear anywhere in the options, and can appear multiple times.

If the example drill tool with those options is a tool that turns the content of its input file into a code-font heading, then the directive above would be the equivalent of having the following comment in the code:

/// # `This is the text that will be sent to the tool as input.`

Tool Environment Variables

Tools have a number of environment variables available to them. They will be interpolated into any arguments given to the tool as $ENV_VAR or $(ENV_VAR), as well as available in the process environment.

Injecting HTML

It rarely happens, but sometimes what you really need is to inject some raw HTML into the dartdoc output, without it being subject to Markdown processing beforehand. This can be useful when the output of an external tool is HTML, for instance. This is where the {@inject-html}...{@end-inject-html} tags come in.

For security reasons, the {@inject-html} directive will be ignored unless the --inject-html flag is given on the dartdoc command line.

Since this HTML fragment doesn't undergo Markdown processing, reference links and other normal processing won't happen on the contained fragment.

So, this:

  ///     {@inject-html}
  ///     <p>[The HTML to inject.]()</p>
  ///     {@end-inject-html}

Will result in this be emitted in its place in the HTML output (notice that the markdown link isn't linked).

<p>[The HTML to inject.]()</p>

It's best to only inject HTML that is self-contained and doesn't depend upon other elements on the page, since those may change in future versions of Dartdoc.

Auto including dependencies

If --auto-include-dependencies flag is provided, dartdoc tries to automatically add all the used libraries, even from other packages, to the list of the documented libraries.

Using linkToSource

The source linking feature in dartdoc is a little tricky to use, since pub packages do not actually include enough information to link back to source code and that's the context in which documentation is generated for the pub site. This means that for now, it must be manually specified in dartdoc_options.yaml what revision to use. It is currently a recommended practice to specify a revision in dartdoc_options.yaml that points to the same revision as your public package. If you're using a documentation staging system outside of Dart's pub site, override the template and revision on the command line with the head revision number. You can use the branch name, but generated docs will generate locations that may start drifting with further changes to the branch.

Example dartdoc_options.yaml:

linkToSource:
  root: '.'
  uriTemplate: 'https://github.com/dart-lang/dartdoc/blob/v0.28.0/%f%#L%l%'

Example staging command line:

dart pub global run dartdoc --link-to-source-root '.' --link-to-source-revision 6fac6f770d271312c88e8ae881861702a9a605be --link-to-source-uri-template 'https://github.com/dart-lang/dartdoc/blob/%r%/%f%#L%l%'

This gets more complicated with --auto-include-dependencies as these command line flags will override all settings from individual packages. In that case, to preserve source links from third party packages it may be necessary to generate dartdoc_options.yaml options for each package you are intending to add source links to yourself.

Issues and bugs

Please file reports on the GitHub Issue Tracker. Issues are labeled with priority based on how much impact to the ecosystem the issue addresses and the number of generated pages that show the anomaly (widespread vs. not widespread).

Some examples of likely triage priorities:

License

Please see the dartdoc license.

Generated docs include: