As a webMethods developer I always wanted an automated API documentor like javadoc. I finally got around to building it. Take a look and let me know what you think:
Interesting-looking tool. Any chance it could be extended to optionally include a summary of the flow steps and the comments on each of those? I know that’s beyond what Javadoc does for Java, but it would be a very helpful option to have.
The Developer has a built-in documentation feature that produces an html file.
The output of this feature shows a step-by-step view including ALL mappings that occur during the course of a flow service.
Bart’s tool, however, documents java services which is NOT included in the developer feature.
The information derived from both (Developer and Bart’s tool) reads the xml description files that contains the relevant data. Just compare the output of the example of either a developer output or the example at Bart’s web site.
The output of this feature shows a step-by-step view including ALL mappings that occur during the course of a flow service.
True, but I don’t believe that the built-in tool generates output including comments on the flow step. That’s more in line with what I was hoping for. The actual mappings aren’t necessarily something I’d want in the documentation anyway - easier to go to the actual code for that.
One more interesting thing is that Bart’s tool integrates with ANT so if you are working other projects in Java and use ANT for your builds then this may make a lot of sense.
Interesting, what I’ve always been looking for is a way to pull together at the package level all the documentation Developer generates for you per service (as Ray noted). I’ve developed a template that looks a lot like Bart’s ‘Service Data’ section that I include in all my services’ comments, which adds some value to the out-of-the-box stuff. Once I’ve generated all the service docs I insert links to them into another template I created that sits in the package’s pub directory (either as the home page or linked up from it).
This provides an easy way for anyone to get to all the service docs from a single page at the package level. Problem is, as Bart noted, someone has to spend the time to pull it all together. Looks like wMDoc is on the right track for automating that.
I cannot view the tool. can you please pass me the new link if its available. I am in the process of writing a utility which does the same as described above. Any help on this would really make things easier for me