Pldoc - documentation generator for PL/SQL

Demo

This is the generated documentation for the Alexandria plsql utils library.

Note: pldoc is under development.

Pldoc is a documentation generator for PL/SQL that is inspired by how documentation is generated in the Go programming language. It takes source code of specification files for PL/SQL packages and generates documentation in html format. Generated documentation can be placed on a server or viewed locally. The source of documentation is the comments in code. The comment that hasn't empty lines between itself and a code object (function, variable etc) is considered as the object's documentation. For example, the next code snippet is the function has_permission with its documentation:

-- Returns true if the user has access to perform
-- this operation.
function has_permission(user_id number, op varchar2) return boolean;

If there is a blank line (or lines) between a comment and an object, the comment isn't processed as documentation:

-- Returns true if the user has access to perform
-- this operation.

function has_permission(user_id number, op varchar2) return boolean;

However, an empty line (or lines) that is the part of a comment, isn't taken into account as a separator between documentation and an object and a whole comment is parsed as documentation:

-- Returns true if the user has access to perform
-- this operation.
--
function has_permission(user_id number, op varchar2) return boolean;

For now, pldoc can generate docs for:

• Package documentation
• Functions, procedures
• Cursors
• Records declaration
• Varrays, tables
• Constants and variables

Limitations

• Specification files should be in UTF-8 encoding

Build from source

go build pldoc.go

Usage

This command generates documentation for each file with .pks extension in the source_directory. The documentation files will be placed in the documentation directory.

pldoc --output=documentation source_directory

To change the extension of searched files, ext flag is used:

pldoc --output=documentation --ext=sql source_directory

Pldoc can generate docs from multiple directories, all you need is just list them with a space. Each directory will be walked recursively, for example:

pldoc --output=documentation source_dir1 source_dir2 source_dir3

Comment styles

It's better not to decorate you comments. Bad example:

/*****************************************
* This function returns the my_table row
* by its id
*****************************************/

Good example:

-- This function returns the my_table row
-- by its id

Another one good example:

/*
   This function returns the my_table row
   by its id
*/

Preformatted text and lists

Any line that has greater indentation that comment's first line is preformatted text.

-- This procedure returns formatted output of
-- passed record. It looks like this:
--     key1: value 1
--     key2: value 2
--     key3: value 3

In documentation, lines from 3 to 5 will be enclosed in pre tag.