The missing documentation tool for your Angular application

Vincent Ogloblinsky

Software architect

" Frontend technologies "

@vogloblinsky

SII Ouest

Angular trainer

 

and

also HTML5, JavaScript, TypeScript

Speaker

 

French meetups and conferences

Let me tell you a story

David

Pascal

Richard

Once upon a time...

3 guys from one startup team had to build a great application using Angular

David

Pascal

Richard

  • tooling
  • global architecture
  • code quality
  • data & communication services
  • continuous integration
  • shared components

Their

missions

Pascal starts the architecture using Angular CLI

He also starts several views of the application in many "views" components

The timeline

David adds after few Angular services in ./shared/services folder

Richard adds the first shared components in ./shared/components folder

At this moment, everything is fine for each team member, but...

Hey Pascal, where are the views which will use my services ?

the first team interaction appears

Watch the ./src/views

folder bro

Hey Richard, which component handle the customer wizard ?

Second team interaction

It is the WizardComponent

in the file

./shared/components/wizard.ts

Imagine the situation after several weeks...

Pascal who is a meticulous guy

starts searching a documentation tool

for their project on the web

and found something interesting in the first search results

Humm...

Feels nice and solid, let's have a look

> npm i --save-dev @compodoc/compodoc

...

compodoc -p src/tsconfig.json -s -w

...

After 30 minutes of code documentation, Pascal commited his work...

Hey Pascal, what is the input for the final processing view component ?

and another team interaction appears

Watch the documentation bro ;)

...

 

now each team member has a clear view of the documentation, architecture etc

Story conclusion

 

 

" Smart tools give smart developers "

 

French proverb

Let me now introduce

Living documentation

A low-effort approach of documentation, always up-to-date, inspired by Domain-Driven Design "

https://leanpub.com/livingdocumentation

As you understand, Compodoc is a documentation tool for Angular applications

what are the key features ?

Features

 

  • full Angular APIs support
  • display each API by type : module, component, directive, service, class, pipe
  • and also application routing
  • application documentation coverage report
  • others TypeScript files like interfaces or simple enums, types or variables
  • additional documentation (markdown files)

Advantages

 

  • offline tool using Node.js
  • no source code uploaded online for metadata scanning
  • no local TypeScript compilation

now, let's have a deep look

Main views - README

(if available at the root of the project)

Main views - Overview

Modules

General infos

Modules

Source code

Components

General infos (metadata, methods, properties, ...)

Components

Source code

Components

Link between general view and source code

Components

Template view

Components

DOM Tree with link to internal components

Components

Services

Classes

Classes

Miscellaneous

Global variables, types, functions etc

Application routing

Routes with modules, lazy-loaded and link to targeted component

Documentation coverage

Get a clean and quick overview of documentation coverage in your project

Additional documentation

Extend generated documentation with additional markdown files

Themes

Use one of the supplied themes that you like

Search

Search engine available for all scanned files

Comments

4 JSDoc tags supported

/**
 * This is a great function
 * 
 * @example
 * processTarget('yo')
 *
 * @param {string} target  The target to process see {@link Todo}
 * @returns The processed target number
 */

Running scenarios

1. Simple generation

compodoc -p src/tsconfig.json

2. Simple generation and serve

compodoc -p src/tsconfig.json -s

3. Simple generation, serve & watch

compodoc -p src/tsconfig.json -s -w

Roadmap

Modules graph (@compodoc/ngd from @manekinekko) using vis.js

 

Support of more general TypeScript/ES6 syntax

 

@flow : bottom slide

 

...

@flow

The idea is to generate a graph of the flow of the data for one user experience scenario (ex: account creation)

WizardComponentPart1

WizardComponentPart2

Online demo

compodoc.github.io/compodoc-demo-todomvc-angular

v1.0.4 available

https://www.npmjs.com/package/@compodoc/compodoc

Thanks

for listening

compodoc.github.io/website

Happy documentation !

Compodoc - The missing documentation tool for your Angular application

By Vincent Ogloblinsky

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Compodoc - The missing documentation tool for your Angular application

Compodoc - The missing documentation tool for your Angular application

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