protoc-gen-docs

README

What's this for?

protoc-gen-docs is a plugin for the Google protocol buffer compiler to generate documentation for any given input protobuf. It runs as a protoc-gen- binary that the protobuf compiler infers from the docs_out flag.

Build protoc-gen-docs

protoc-gen-docs is written in Go, so ensure that is installed on your system. You can follow the instructions on the golang website or on Debian or Ubuntu, you can install it from the package manager:

sudo apt-get install -y golang

To build, first ensure you have the protocol compiler (protoc) and markdown processing library (blackfriday):

go get github.com/golang/protobuf/proto && go get -u gopkg.in/russross/blackfriday.v2

To build, run the following command from this project directory:

go build

Then ensure the resulting protoc-gen-docs binary is in your PATH. A recommended location is $HOME/bin:

cp protoc-gen-docs $HOME/bin

Since the following is often in your $HOME/.bashrc file:

export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH

Using protoc-gen-docs

Then to generate a page of HTML describing the protobuf defined by file.proto, run

protoc --docs_out=output_directory input_directory/file.proto

With that input, the output will be written to

output_directory/file.pb.html

Using the mode option, you can control the output format from the plugin. The html_page mode is the default and produces a fully self-contained HTML page. The html_fragment mode outputs an HTML fragment that can be used to embed in a larger page. Finally, the html_fragment_with_front_matter mode outputs an HTML fragment augmented with front-matter

You specify the mode option using this syntax:

protoc --docs_out=mode=html_page:output_directory input_directory/file.proto

Using the warnings option, you can control whether warnings are produced to report proto elements that aren't commented. You can use this option with the following syntax:

protoc --docs_out=warnings=true:output_directory input_directory/file.proto

Using the camel_case_fields option, you can control whether field names are camel cased or not in the output. The default is to camel case fields.

protoc --docs_out=camel_case_fields=false:output_directory input_directory/file.proto

Using the custom_style_sheet option, you can control the style sheet used when generating full stand-alone HTML pages. You provide the URL of the style sheet as parameter, and the URL will be inserted into the generated HTML.

You can specify multiple options together by separating them with commas:

protoc --docs_out=warnings=true,mode=html_page:output_directory input_directory/file.proto

Using the per_file option, you can change the output mode to document protos on a per-file basis. The file introduction text is taken from the pkg statement just like in the per-package (default) mode. In the per-package mode, only one file may document the pkg. If there are conflicts, the compiler will emit a warning and continue with the first comment it found.

Writing docs

Writing documentation for use with protoc-gen-docs is simply a matter of adding comments to elements within the input proto file. You can put comments directly above individual elements, or to the right. For example:

// A package-level comment
package pkg;

// This documents the message as a whole
message MyMsg {
    // This documents this field 
    // It can contain many lines.
    int32 field1 = 1;

    int32 field2 = 2;       // This documents field2
}

Comments are treated as markdown. You can thus embed classic markdown annotations within any comment.

Linking to types and elements

In addition to normal markdown links, you can also use special proto links within any comment. Proto links are used to create a link to other types or elements within the set of protos. You specify proto links using two pairs of square brackets such as:

// This is a comment that links to another type: [MyOtherType][MyPkg.MyOtherType]
message MyMsg {

}

The first square brackets contain the name of the type to display in the resulting documentation. The second square brackets contain the fully qualified name of the type or element being referenced, including the package name.

Front-matter

Within a proto file, you can insert special comments which provide additional metadata to use in producing quality documentation. Within a package, optionally include an unattached comment of the form:

// $title: My Title
// $description: My Overview
// $location: https://mysite.com/mypage.html

$title provides a title for the generated package documentation. This is used for things like the title of the generated HTML. $description is a one-line description of the package, useful for tables of contents or indexes. Finally, $location indicates the expected URL for the generated documentation. This is used to help downstream processing tools to know where to copy the documentation, and is used when creating documentation links from other packages to this one.

Additional lines starting with a $ are inserted as-is in the front-matter portion of generated HTML fragments.

// $weight: 10

The above will include the front matter entry weight: 10 in the generated HTML fragment.

Hiding elements from the generated docs

If a comment for an element contains the annotation $hide_from_docs, then the associated element will be omitted from the output. This is useful when staging the introduction of new features that aren't quite ready for use yet. The annotation can appear anywhere in the comment for the element. For example:

message MyMsg {
    int32 field1 = 1; // $hide_from_docs
}

Specifying CSS class

The comment for any element can contain the annotation $class: <foo> which is used to insert a specific HTML class around the generated element. This is useful to give particular styling to particular elements. Common examples of useful classes include

message MyMsg {
    int32 field1 = 1; // $class: alpha
    int32 field2 = 2; // $class: beta
    int32 field3 = 3; // $class: experimental
}