Coding Standards 2019

In this respect, such a document should not be referred to in this section, but rather should be referred to application performance management tools in the next section. Unchecked exceptions are the classes RuntimeException, Error and their subclasses.

Doxygen will automatically provide links to the types being renamed, if their documentation is available. ‘See Also’ is an optional section used to refer to related code. This javadoc standards section can be very useful, but should be used judiciously. The goal is to direct users to other functions they may not be aware of, or have easy means of discovering .

@public, @protected, And @private

The advantage of immutable classes is that their objects can be shared freely by different code modules. As an example, we present a method that calculates the score for a bowling frame given the two objects for the next two frames.

Well the point is that, because you love them, an you want to help them participate in the development of your exciting BurgerQueen implementation. Also, I know that every time you create a class or a method you think about documenting it.

Java Syntax And Its Layout

The scope to verify is specified using the Scope class and defaults to Scope.PUBLIC. To verify another scope, set property scope to a different scope. Checks the indentation of the continuation lines in block tags. That is whether the continued description of at clauses should be indented or not. If the text is not properly indented it throws a violation.

These comments are meant to be read only by developers reading and editing the source code. A javadoc description shall be included prior to each public instance variable according to the following templates. A javadoc description should be provided for package, protected, and private instance variables where the name does not imply the use . The beginning of the file should contain a javadoc comment that explains what the class is for. Often, one also puts here information concerning the author, the date of last modification, and so on. The specification of a method will name all parameters and give their meanings.

Binary Standard Input And Standard Output

If desired, groups of tags, such as multiple @see tags, can be separated from the other tags by a blank line with a single asterisk. Miscellaneous unprocessed files – these include images, sample source code, class files, applets, HTML files, and whatever else you might want to reference from the previous files. The doc comments for the Java platform API specification is owned programmers. However, they are edited by both programmers and writers.

tag is optional if all parameters are input, even if other functions or methods in the same class or package use output parameters. Parameters should be listed in the same order as they appear in the function or method signature. Make sure to keep the parameter list in sync with the actual parameters; Doxygen will issue a warning if they don’t match. This page focuses on public code documentation using Doxygen, while internal comments are discussed in our DM C++ Style Guide. The LSST Stack uses Doxygen to build C++ API reference documentation from comment blocks.

Statements¶

There are many ways of approaching code documentation in Java, but they do have a caveat. Not every approach can be equated to good practice, but that doesn’t mean you cannot work with anything besides best practices. Feel free to change the paradigm if your project needs it. You can create links to other classes and methods using the tag. It’s a best practice to include a constructor in a class.

Please be aware that by commenting you provide consent to associate your selected profile with your comment. Long comments or those with excessive links may be deleted by Blogger (not me!). Null-handling is a language level problem in Java, and the language level solutions are far nicer than annotations of Optional. I consider code without any Javadoc to be sloppy, even if it is not public. Thats because it is still an API, and still “public” to your colleagues.

Table Of Javadoc Tags

Use one-line comments to explain implementation details such as the purpose of specific variables and expressions. Use descriptive names for all variables, function names, constants, and other identifiers. Every time that you open a bracket you should indent the code written after it. The indentation should continue until the bracket is closed. Tab indentation is too much and will make code harder to read instead of easier. When a reference to a static class member must be qualified, it is qualified with that class’s name, not with a reference or expression of that class’s type.

This includes both completely empty Javadoc, and Javadoc with only tags such as @param and @return. Note that only inheritable items will allow the tag to be used in place of comments. Static methods at all visibilities, private non-static methods and constructors are not inheritable. Following are parts of the code from a simple code generator called SimpleCodeMaker, which performs the same task as the SimpleDoclet previously listed. Instead of sending the output to the screen, SimpleCodeMaker saves it to a file in the subdirectory genclasses. The implementation of the make method is also becoming more structured with separate methods to process fields and methods.

It inherits all the comments for methods which are either an implementation over other methods or is overridden. The automatic behavior can help you avoid retyping, and make the proper use of JavaDoc tool. Even though it feels awesome to think javadoc standards that your code doesn’t require any code documentation, it is not practical at all. Many times, programmers have to write code for complex business logic. Without code documentation, it is hard to understand the logic behind the code.

Saying that a class or a method are available since version 0.2 doesn’t have a particular meaning. This is why I always put a relevant @since for helping my teammates understand when something has been available at the first sight. Common acronyms such as XML, GIF, GUI, ID, URL, etc. shall appear in all identifiers using uppercase. Identifiers comprised of compound words shall represent the acronyms in uppercase, such as XMLFile and imageToGIFTranslator.

For example, you can use @author tag to identify the author of a class, @exception to showcase the exception thrown by a method, and so on. The JavaDoc utility program enables you to extract code comments into external HTML files. This utility is one of the best features of the Java Development Kit and helps coders to easily create code documentation. If you have ever seen the Java API library, you already know how they make use of code documentation. Code documentation is a necessary evil that every developer has to deal with. Almost every programming language has different ways of approaching code documentation, and today, we will discuss the best practices of code documentation in Java. With Java, anyone can easily create enterprise-level applications.

Although spaces after asterisks are optional in the Javadoc comments, their absence makes the documentation difficult to read. It is the de facto standard to put at least one whitespace after the leading asterisk. The documentation generated will be just “Some text.” without any asterisks. Since these asterisks will not appear in the generated documentation, they should not be considered as the beginning of the Javadoc content. In such cases, the check assumes that the Javadoc content begins on the second line. Unchecked exceptions do not need to be documented, though they can be documented if it is helpful to the caller. For example, NullPointerExceptions are usually not documented.

Three Types Of Comments

I would document IAE, ISE and similar wherever possible, as they are real outcomes of using the method. I make it a policy to dump employees who don’t document their code properly. I give them many warnings but if they persist I show them the door. This comments demonstrate exactly what is wrong with most developers today.

• This is because Javadoc reads each variable and places them separately to the generated HTML page with the same documentation comment that is copied for all fields.
• There should be no heading before the first sentence, because the Javadoc tool picks up the first text as the summary statement.
• This description should be extensive enough that a developer will understand how to use this class by reading the documentation.
• Code bugs and their workarounds are often likewise distributed separately in a bug report.
• Each method should have a comment – the point of the method.
• However, a convention in Java is that a function that yields the value of a field is the name of the field preceded by “get”.

References are meant to augment the documentation, but should not be required to understand it. Note that LaTeX is not particularly easy to read, so use equations judiciously. In particular, do not use inline LaTeX just to add Greek or other special symbols; prefer HTML character entities or Unicode instead. If your function’s input requires a lengthy explanation, put the explanation in the Notes and refer to it from the parameter descriptions.

Preventive Solution – The reason the “illegal” quotes occurred was that a default Word option is “Change ‘Straight Quotes’ to ‘Smart Quotes'”. If you turn this off, you get the appropriate straight quotes when you type. The idea is to clearly delineate what is part of the API spec and what is not, so the JCK team can write tests with the proper breadth. This might even encourage some writers to break documents apart so specs are separate. Some “specifications” that engineers have written contain no assertions not already stated in the API specs — they just elaborate on the API specs.

Postrd by: France Marmousez