Docco is a quick-and-dirty documentation generator, written in Literate CoffeeScript. It produces an HTML document that displays your comments intermingled with your code. All prose is passed through Markdown, and code is passed through Highlight.js syntax highlighting. This page is the result of running Docco against its own source file.
Install Docco with npm: sudo npm install -g docco
Run it against your code: docco src/*.coffee
There is no “Step 3”. This will generate an HTML page for each of the named
source files, with a menu linking to the other pages, saving the whole mess
into a docs folder (configurable).
The Docco source is available on GitHub, and is released under the Lil License.
Docco can be used to process code written in any programming language. If it
doesn’t handle your favorite yet, feel free to
add it to the list.
Finally, the “literate” style of any
language listed in languages.json
is also supported — just tack an .md extension on the end:
.coffee.md, .py.md, and so on.
If Node.js doesn’t run on your platform, or you’d prefer a more convenient package, get Ryan Tomayko‘s Rocco, the Ruby port that’s available as a gem.
If you’re writing shell scripts, try Shocco, a port for the POSIX shell, also by Mr. Tomayko.
If Python is more your speed, take a look at Nick Fitzgerald‘s Pycco.
For Clojure fans, Fogus‘s Marginalia is a bit of a departure from “quick-and-dirty”, but it’ll get the job done.
There’s a Go port called Gocco, written by Nikhil Marathe.
For all you PHP buffs out there, Fredi Bach’s sourceMakeup (we’ll let the faux pas with respect to our naming scheme slide), should do the trick nicely.
Lua enthusiasts can get their fix with Robert Gieseke‘s Locco.
And if you happen to be a .NET aficionado, check out Don Wilson‘s Nocco.
Going further afield from the quick-and-dirty, Groc is a CoffeeScript fork of Docco that adds a searchable table of contents, and aims to gracefully handle large projects with complex hierarchies of code.
For ES6 fans, Docco Next is an expanded rewrite of Docco in modern JavaScript, thoroughly commented, and with the bonus that your existing templates will still work.
Note that not all ports support all Docco features.
Generate the documentation for our configured source file by copying over static assets, reading all the source files in, splitting them up into prose+code sections, highlighting each file in the appropriate language, and printing them out in an HTML template.
document = (options = {}, callback) ->
config = configure options
fs.mkdirs config.output, ->
callback or= (error) -> throw error if error
copyAsset = (file, callback) ->
return callback() unless fs.existsSync file
fs.copy file, path.join(config.output, path.basename(file)), callback
complete = ->
copyAsset config.css, (error) ->
return callback error if error
return copyAsset config.public, callback if fs.existsSync config.public
callback()
files = config.sources.slice()
nextFile = ->
source = files.shift()
fs.readFile source, (error, buffer) ->
return callback error if error
code = buffer.toString()
sections = parse source, code, config
format source, sections, config
write source, sections, config
if files.length then nextFile() else complete()
nextFile()Given a string of source code, parse out each block of prose and the code that
follows it — by detecting which is which, line by line — and then create an
individual section for it. Each section is an object with docsText and
codeText properties, and eventually docsHtml and codeHtml as well.
parse = (source, code, config = {}) ->
lines = code.split '\n'
sections = []
lang = getLanguage source, config
hasCode = docsText = codeText = ''
save = ->
sections.push {docsText, codeText}
hasCode = docsText = codeText = ''Our quick-and-dirty implementation of the literate programming style. Simply invert the prose and code relationship on a per-line basis, and then continue as normal below.
if lang.literate
isText = maybeCode = yes
for line, i in lines
lines[i] = if maybeCode and match = /^([ ]{4}|[ ]{0,3}\t)/.exec line
isText = no
line[match[0].length..]
else if maybeCode = /^\s*$/.test line
if isText then lang.symbol else ''
else
isText = yes
lang.symbol + ' ' + line
for line in lines
if line.match(lang.commentMatcher) and not line.match(lang.commentFilter)
save() if hasCode
docsText += (line = line.replace(lang.commentMatcher, '')) + '\n'
save() if /^(---+|===+)$/.test line
else
hasCode = yes
codeText += line + '\n'
save()
sectionsTo format and highlight the now-parsed sections of code, we use Highlight.js over stdio, and run the text of their corresponding comments through Markdown, using Marked.
format = (source, sections, config) ->
language = getLanguage source, configPass any user defined options to Marked if specified via command line option
markedOptions =
smartypants: true
if config.marked
markedOptions = config.marked
marked.setOptions markedOptionsTell Marked how to highlight code blocks within comments, treating that code as either the language specified in the code block or the language of the file if not specified.
marked.setOptions {
highlight: (code, lang) ->
lang or= language.name
if highlightjs.getLanguage(lang)
highlightjs.highlight(code, {language: lang}).value
else
console.warn "docco: couldn't highlight code block with unknown language '#{lang}' in #{source}"
code
}
for section, i in sections
code = highlightjs.highlight(section.codeText, {language: language.name}).value
code = code.replace(/\s+$/, '')
section.codeHtml = "<div class='highlight'><pre>#{code}</pre></div>"
section.docsHtml = marked(section.docsText)Once all of the code has finished highlighting, we can write the resulting documentation file by passing the completed HTML sections into the template, and rendering it to the specified output path.
write = (source, sections, config) ->
destination = (file) ->
path.join(config.output, path.dirname(file), path.basename(file, path.extname(file)) + '.html')
relative = (file) ->
to = path.dirname(path.resolve(file))
from = path.dirname(path.resolve(destination(source)))
path.join(path.relative(from, to), path.basename(file))The title of the file is either the first heading in the prose, or the name of the source file.
firstSection = _.find sections, (section) ->
section.docsText.length > 0
first = marked.lexer(firstSection.docsText)[0] if firstSection
hasTitle = first and first.type is 'heading' and first.depth is 1
title = if hasTitle then first.text else path.basename source
css = relative path.join(config.output, path.basename(config.css))
html = config.template {sources: config.sources, css,
title, hasTitle, sections, path, destination, relative}
console.log "docco: #{source} -> #{destination source}"
fs.outputFileSync destination(source), htmlDefault configuration options. All of these may be extended by user-specified options.
defaults =
layout: 'parallel'
output: 'docs'
template: null
css: null
extension: null
languages: {}
marked: nullConfigure this particular run of Docco. We might use a passed-in external template, or one of the built-in layouts. We only attempt to process source files for languages for which we have definitions.
configure = (options) ->
config = _.extend {}, defaults, _.pick(options.opts(), _.keys(defaults)...)
config.languages = buildMatchers config.languagesThe user is able to override the layout file used with the --template parameter.
In this case, it is also neccessary to explicitly specify a stylesheet file.
These custom templates are compiled exactly like the predefined ones, but the public folder
is only copied for the latter.
if options.template
unless options.css
console.warn "docco: no stylesheet file specified"
config.layout = null
else
dir = config.layout = path.join __dirname, 'resources', config.layout
config.public = path.join dir, 'public' if fs.existsSync path.join dir, 'public'
config.template = path.join dir, 'docco.jst'
config.css = options.css or path.join dir, 'resources/linear/docco.css'
config.template = _.template fs.readFileSync(config.template).toString()
if options.marked
config.marked = JSON.parse fs.readFileSync(options.marked)
config.sources = options.args.filter((source) ->
lang = getLanguage source, config
console.warn "docco: skipped unknown type (#{path.basename source})" unless lang
lang
).sort()
configRequire our external dependencies.
_ = require 'underscore'
fs = require 'fs-extra'
path = require 'path'
marked = require('marked').marked
commander = require 'commander'
highlightjs = require 'highlight.js'Languages are stored in JSON in the file resources/languages.json.
Each item maps the file extension to the name of the language and the
symbol that indicates a line comment. To add support for a new programming
language to Docco, just add it to the file.
languages = JSON.parse fs.readFileSync(path.join(__dirname, 'resources', 'languages.json'))Build out the appropriate matchers and delimiters for each language.
buildMatchers = (languages) ->
for ext, l of languagesDoes the line begin with a comment?
l.commentMatcher = ///^\s*#{l.symbol}\s?///Ignore hashbangs and interpolations…
l.commentFilter = /(^#![/]|^\s*#\{)/
languages
languages = buildMatchers languagesA function to get the current language we’re documenting, based on the
file extension. Detect and tag “literate” .ext.md variants.
getLanguage = (source, config) ->
ext = config.extension or path.extname(source) or path.basename(source)
lang = config.languages?[ext] or languages[ext]
if lang and lang.name is 'markdown'
codeExt = path.extname(path.basename(source, ext))
codeLang = config.languages?[codeExt] or languages[codeExt]
if codeExt and codeLang
lang = _.extend {}, codeLang, {literate: yes}
langKeep it DRY. Extract the docco version from package.json
version = JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync(path.join(__dirname, 'package.json'))).versionFinally, let’s define the interface to run Docco from the command line. Parse options using Commander.
run = (args = process.argv) ->
c = defaults
commander.version(version)
.usage('[options] files')
.option('-L, --languages [file]', 'use a custom languages.json', _.compose JSON.parse, fs.readFileSync)
.option('-l, --layout [name]', 'choose a layout (parallel, linear or classic)', c.layout)
.option('-o, --output [path]', 'output to a given folder', c.output)
.option('-c, --css [file]', 'use a custom css file', c.css)
.option('-t, --template [file]', 'use a custom .jst template', c.template)
.option('-e, --extension [ext]', 'assume a file extension for all inputs', c.extension)
.option('-m, --marked [file]', 'use custom marked options', c.marked)
.parse(args)
.name = "docco"
if commander.args.length
document commander
else
console.log commander.helpInformation()Docco = module.exports = {run, document, parse, format, version}