JSDoc Setup Guide

JSDoc is a popular tool used to generate documentation for JavaScript code. It allows developers to document their code in a standardized format, making it easier for others to understand and use their code.

Here is a step-by-step tutorial on how to set up JSDoc for your JavaScript project:

Install JSDoc

You can install JSDoc using npm (the Node.js package manager). Open your terminal or command prompt and run the following command:

1npm install -g jsdoc

This command will install JSDoc globally on your system, so you can use it for any JavaScript project.

Create a JSDoc configuration file

JSDoc requires a configuration file to specify how the documentation should be generated. Create a new file named jsdoc.json in the root directory of your project, and add the following code:

 1{
 2  "source": {
 3    "include": ["./src"],
 4    "includePattern": ".+\\.js(doc)?$",
 5    "excludePattern": "(^|\\/|\\\\)_"
 6  },
 7  "opts": {
 8    "destination": "./docs",
 9    "recurse": true
10  },
11  "plugins": [
12    "plugins/markdown"
13  ],
14  "markdown": {
15    "parser": "gfm",
16    "hardwrap": true
17  },
18  "templates": {
19    "cleverLinks": false,
20    "monospaceLinks": false
21  }
22}

This configuration file tells JSDoc to generate documentation for all JavaScript files in the ./src directory, and save the output in the ./docs directory. It also specifies that JSDoc should use the markdown plugin to support Markdown syntax in the documentation, and specifies some options for the Markdown parser.

Add JSDoc comments to your code

JSDoc uses special comments in your code to generate documentation. These comments start with the /** characters and contain tags that describe the code element being documented.

For example, here's how you can document a JavaScript function using JSDoc comments:

1/**
2 * Add two numbers together.
3 * @param {number} a - The first number.
4 * @param {number} b - The second number.
5 * @returns {number} The sum of the two numbers.
6 */
7function add(a, b) {
8  return a + b;
9}

In this example, the @param tag is used to document the function's parameters, and the @returns tag is used to document the return value.

Generate the documentation

To generate the documentation, run the following command in your terminal or command prompt:

1jsdoc -c jsdoc.json

This command tells JSDoc to use the jsdoc.json configuration file to generate the documentation. The output will be saved in the ./docs directory (as specified in the configuration file).

That's it! You should now have a set of documentation files generated by JSDoc for your JavaScript project. You can open the index.html file in the ./docs directory in a web browser to view the documentation.