Flex builder offers a very easy way to generate documentation for your actionscript classes API. There are basically 2 steps involved:
- Comment your actionscript class as per ASDoc guidelines. You can refer the instructions in the Flex documentation.
- Use ASDoc external tool from within your Flex builder to generate the documentation. You can do this using commandline as well. However, I found it much more convenient using Flex builder.
Here’s what I did for my project:
Tool used: Flex Builder 3, SDK 3.2.0
1. Add comments to my custom UniConverter class (plz note this is not the complete class) as follows:
package com.bs.uni
{
import fl.core.UIComponent;
/**
* This component class can be used to convert different
* special characters to unicode characters for a given string.
*
*/
public class UniConverter extends UIComponent
{
private var _strResult:String;
/**
* Convert basic latin special characters to unicode for a
* given string.
*
* @param src The source string that contains basic latin
* special characters which needs to be converted to unicode.
*
* @return The source string with basic latin
* special characters converted to unicode.
*/
public function basicLatin(src:String):String
{
if (src == null)
{
throw("Invalid source string.");
}
else
{
_strResult = src;
convert(BasicLatinXML.getXML());
return _strResult;
}
}
2. Select Run > External Tools > Open External Tools Dialog
3. Add a program and name it ASDoc_Uni. You can give any name.
4. Location: field — add C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flex Builder 3\sdks\3.2.0\bin\asdoc.exe
5. Working Directory: field — browse to my project folder. The field shows ${workspace_loc:/UniConverter} which points to my working directory.
6. Arguments: field — add the following command
-source-path "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Flash CS4\Common\Configuration\Component Source\ActionScript 3.0\User Interface"
${workspace_loc:/UniConverter}
-doc-classes fl.core.UIComponent
com.bs.uni.UniConverter
-exclude-classes fl.core.UIComponent
-exclude-dependencies=true
-main-title "Unicode Converter"
-window-title "Unicode Converter"
The above command adds 2 source paths for the classes that have been used – my project directory and the current actionscript API. It specifies 2 classes – my custom class and the UIcomponent class which it inherits. Now, I only want my custom class in the documentation and not the flash inbuilt UIComponent class. To exclude the UIComponent class, specify it next to -exclude-classes and also set -exclude-dependencies=true. Finally, I just set the documentation title and the window title as “Unicode Converter”. There’s more you can do, just check the ASDoc documentation.
7. Once through, click Run. A new folder named asdoc-output is created in project folder. Open the folder and launch index.html. There you go, documentation is all set.
Flex ASDoc Tool
