README.md

Tool to generate markdown documentation for structs

structmd is a cmd line app which takes in markdown files and adds to them documentation for all structures in certain golang source code files.

How to run

In your markdown file (i.e. README.md) you can add lines like the 2 lines below:

[structmd]:# (pkg/apiserver/cors.go MySettingsStruct MyOtherStruct) [structmd end]:#

Notice on the first line the [structmd]:# keyword followed by a single source code file pkg/apiserver/cors.go then a list of struct names. The second line is also mandatory, as it marks the end of this current structmd block.

Then you run the structmd cmd line app: ./structmd README1.md README2.md

This app takes in a list of markdown files, parses them, and replaces all [structmd]:# lines with a list of struct descriptions.

Output table

• title: struct name followed by its godoc description
• first column: the names of all public fields of a given struct
• second column: an explanation of that that field does, taken from its godoc comments
• third column: the default value for that field, taken from its tag

Implementation

The code creates the AST for a given file, then traverses it using ast.Inspect. The nature of the tree is that for a given node ast.Inspect will be behave like this:

Inspect traverses an AST in depth-first order: It starts by calling f(node); node must not be nil. 
If f returns true, Inspect invokes f recursively for each of the non-nil children of node, followed by a call of f(nil).

In practice, for a given node f() will be invoked like this:

   f(node)
   for child := range node.children {
      f(child) 
      Inspect(child, f)
   }
   f(nil)

Example

For this input:

// MySettingsStruct does smth.
// line 1
// line two
type MySettingsStruct struct {
	// Port does smth else.
	// Port related comment
	Port        string              `cfg:"port" default:"8080"`
}

Our tool will produce the following output:

MySettingsStruct

MySettingsStruct does smth.\nline 1\nline two

field	type	default	description
Port	string	8080	Port does smth else.\nPort related comment

Notes

• the following godoc rule is being obeyed: if a struct or field has one or more lines of comments, the first comment beginning with the name of that struct/field is considered the beginning of its godoc comment
• the source file in the [structmd]:# line needs to be relative to the location of the repo's base directory, not relative to the location of the .md file