Doclet
A doclet refers to modules based on applets , which are used by documentation tools for processing and automatically generating documentation and possibly also code. Doclets are known in particular in the context of the Java programming language , where they are used as modules in the Javadoc documentation tool .
The built-in Javadoc standard doclet generated from Java source code an API documentation in HTML . There are numerous alternative doclets to generate the API documentation in other formats, for example the Windows Help format, Framemaker / MIF, XML or PDF. Other alternative doclets extend the generated API documentation and embed (e.g.) UML diagrams generated automatically from the Java classes .
Doclets for generating code are currently still enjoying great popularity, even if they will be replaced in the medium term by the annotations added in Java 5.0 . The best known of these code-generating doclets is probably the XDoclet , which J2EE developers use to automatically generate home interfaces, remote interfaces, implementations, EJB-QL, SQL code, deployment descriptors and assembly descriptors from a single source code and thus save a lot of typing and development time; in particular, however, all individual files are up to date and compatible.
Web links
- Javadoc Tool oracle.com (English)
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Package
com.sun.javadoc
Doclet API Specification (English) - MIF Doclet (English)
- Known site with many doclets (English)
- UML Doclet
- XDoclet website (English)
- XDoclet 2 website (English)