Using Javadoc

We have provided a sample Java class that incorporates a number of the tags listed above. Download the sample code here and take a few minutes to examine its contents.

Creating Documentation in HTML Format

Generate the Java documentation for the sample class by executing the command in listing 2A.  The first two options, “-author –version”, instruct the javadoc tool to respect the @author & @version tags. Otherwise, javadoc will ignore these tags during document creation. The last option, “-d c:documentation”, informs javadoc to generate the documents to the specified directory.

Listing 2A: Generate documentation through the Javadoc tool

javadoc –author –version –d c:documentation JavaDocDemo.java

The screen shot (Figure 1) shows the successful generation of the documentation.

Figure 1: Successful Generation of Javadoc

Listing 2B shows the general usage of the javadoc tool. Execute “javadoc –help” for more information regarding the available options.

Listing 2B: Generate documentation for the sample class.

javadoc [options] [packagenames] [sourcefiles] [classnames] [@files]