Javadoc

Welcome to the NetBeans Javadoc module background. If you are looking for NetBeans API Javadoc follow the API link. If you are looking for user's documentation consult your IDE help. Otherwise read on ...

What does it support?

It integrates Javadoc tool support into NetBeans IDE (or similar).

Maintaining Javadoc Documentation

The first part provides support for maintaining Javadoc based documentation of your project. This includes the following tasks:

• Creating/editing the Javadoc comments associated with the JavaElements. You can either use the standard NetBeans editor for creating Javadoc comments or a special dialog based customizer for Javadoc comments which can be opened from property sheet of each commentable Java element.
  

• Checking correctness of comments in your source code.
  
  First, check whether all Java elements which must be commented do have comments. When the comments exist they have to correspond with the elements to which they belong. (e.g. there has to be a @param tag for each parameter in a method, a @throws tag for every exception thrown from the method etc.) A tool called AutoComment is used for this purposes.

  The tool works on particular java files, file selections or java packages.

• Generating missing javadoc. The Correct Javadoc action helps you to generate a javadoc skeleton of methods and constructors. You can select a java element node inside the projects view or simply place the caret to a method declaration inside the editor and go to Tools in the main menu.

  Before	After

• Generating the HTML documentation of your project. There is a special action which generates the documentation. See context menu of your project node.
  

  The Documenting panel enables you to configure how the IDE generates Javadoc documentation for your project.

Searching and Reading the Javadoc Documentation

For comfortable browsing of JDK documentation and additional 3rd party libraries used in a project, a user needs -

• properly customized the java platform and libraries used by the project. You can do it in the Java Platform Manager and the Library Manager. Both managers are accessible via Tools menu.
  
  Do not forget to add such platform or library to your project in the Project Properties dialog.

• a tool for searching the index files. The Javadoc Index Search tool performs this task. You can invoke it from the editor by Shift+F1 or from the Tools menu.
  

• ability to browse documentation. You can configure your preferred browser via the General section of the Tools/Options dialog. Then you can choose documentation either from the Documentation Indices menu or just place the caret to java element inside the editor and use the Show Javadoc action Alt+F1.
  

• display javadoc for particular code completion items.

Future Development

We would like to integrate the AutoComment Tool functionality into the IDE in a smoother way. It means do not edit javadoc via the tool but directly inside the editor. So we would like to provide syntax highlighting and code completion inside the javadoc block, javadoc error annotations in the error stripe. The Correct Javadoc action should be integrated with editor hints. In order to do not miss the error checking over packages and file selections it will be necessary to involve the Tasklist.