Donna

Donna is a tool for generating CoffeeScript metadata for the purpose of generating API documentation. It reads your CoffeeScript module, and outputs an object indicating the locations and other data about your classes, properties, methods, etc.

It pulled out of biscotto.

Metadata??

The Donna metadata format is a very raw format indicating the locations of objects like classes, functions, and imports within files of a CoffeeScript module. Included in the metadata are unmolested doc strings for these objects.

An Example:

# Public: A mutable text container with undo/redo support and the ability to
# annotate logical regions in the text.
#
class TextBuffer
  @prop2: "bar"

  # Public: Takes an argument and does some stuff.
  #
  # a - A {String}
  #
  # Returns {Boolean}.
  @method2: (a) ->

Generates metadata:

{
  "files": {
    "spec/metadata_templates/classes/class_with_prototype_properties.coffee": {
      "objects": {
        "3": {
          "0": {
            "type": "class",
            "name": "TextBuffer",
            "bindingType": null,
            "classProperties": [],
            "prototypeProperties": [
              [
                4,
                9
              ],
              [
                11,
                11
              ]
            ],
            "doc": " Public: A mutable text container with undo/redo support and the ability to\nannotate logical regions in the text.\n\n ",
            "range": [
              [
                3,
                0
              ],
              [
                11,
                17
              ]
            ]
          }
        },
        "4": {
          "9": {
            "name": "prop2",
            "type": "primitive",
            "range": [
              [
                4,
                9
              ],
              [
                4,
                13
              ]
            ],
            "bindingType": "prototypeProperty"
          }
        },
        "11": {
          "11": {
            "name": "method2",
            "bindingType": "prototypeProperty",
            "type": "function",
            "paramNames": [
              "a"
            ],
            "range": [
              [
                11,
                11
              ],
              [
                11,
                16
              ]
            ],
            "doc": " Public: Takes an argument and does some stuff.\n\na - A {String}\n\nReturns {Boolean}. "
          }
        }
      },
      "exports": {}
    }
  }
}

The Donna metadata format is doc-string-format agnostic. Use tomdoc? Javadoc? Markdown? With this format, you should be able to generate your own API docs with any doc format parser you like.

Donna currently has a counterpart named tello that generates an easily digestible json format using the atomdoc format on the docs strings from Donna output.

Usage

npm install donna

From your code

donna = require 'donna'
metadata = donna.generateMetadata(['/path/to/my-module', '/path/to/another-module'])

From the command line

Pass it the top level directory of your module. It will read the package.json file and index any .coffee files from within the src, app, or lib directories:

donna -o donna.json /path/to/my-module

It handles multiple modules. Each should have a package.json file. It will place the results from both modules in the donna.json file.

donna -o donna.json /path/to/my-module /path/to/another-module

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2014 GitHub

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.