dartdoc

Use dartdoc to generate HTML documentaton for your Dart package.

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

For issues/details related to hosted Dart API docs, see dart-lang/api.dartlang.org.

Installing dartdoc

• download the Dart SDK
• add the SDK's bin directory to your PATH

Generating docs

Run dartdoc from the root directory of package. For example:

$ dartdoc
Generating documentation for 'server_code_lab' into <path-to-server-code-lab>/server_code_lab/doc/api/

parsing lib/client/piratesapi.dart...
parsing lib/common/messages.dart...
parsing lib/common/utils.dart...
parsing lib/server/piratesapi.dart...
Parsed 4 files in 8.1 seconds.

generating docs for library pirate.messages from messages.dart...
generating docs for library pirate.server from piratesapi.dart...
generating docs for library pirate.utils from utils.dart...
generating docs for library server_code_lab.piratesApi.client from piratesapi.dart...
Documented 4 libraries in 9.6 seconds.

Success! Docs generated into <path-to-server-code-lab>/server_code_lab/doc/api/index.html

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

Run dartdoc -h to see the available command-line options.

Viewing docs

You can view the generated docs directly from the file system, but if you want to use the search function, you must load them with an HTTP server.

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

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

Navigate to http://localhost:8080 in your browser; the search function should now work.

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

Check out the Effective Dart: Documentation guide.

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

Excluding from documentation

dartdoc will not generate documentation for a Dart element and its children that have the <nodoc> tag in the documentation comment.

Issues and bugs

Please file reports on the GitHub Issue Tracker.

License

Please see the dartdoc license.