Getting Started with YARD

There are a few ways which YARD can be of use to you or your project. This document will cover the most common ways to use YARD:

Documenting Code with YARD

By default, YARD is compatible with the same RDoc syntax most Ruby developers are already familiar with. However, one of the biggest advantages of YARD is the extended meta-data syntax, commonly known as "tags", that you can use to express small bits of information in a structured and formal manner. While RDoc syntax expects you to describe your method in a completely free-form manner, YARD recommends declaring your parameters, return types, etc. with the @tag syntax, which makes outputting the documentation more consistent and easier to read. Consider the RDoc documentation for a method reverse:

# Converts the object into textual markup given a specific `format` 
# (defaults to `:html`)
#
# == Parameters:
# format::
#   A Symbol declaring the format to convert the object to. This 
#   can be `:text` or `:html`.
#
# == Returns:
# A string representing the object in a specified
# format.
#
def to_format(format = :html)
  # format the object
end

While this may seem easy enough to read and understand, it's hard for a machine to properly pull this data back out of our documentation. Also we've tied our markup to our content, and now our documentation becomes hard to maintain if we decide later to change our markup style (maybe we don't want the ":" suffix on our headers anymore).

In YARD, we would simply define our method as:

# Converts the object into textual markup given a specific format.
#
# @param [Symbol] format the format type, `:text` or `:html`
# @return [String] the object converted into the expected format.
def to_format(format = :html)
  # format the object
end

Using tags we can add semantic metadata to our code without worrying about presentation. YARD will handle presentation for us when we decide to generate documentation later.

Which Markup Format?

YARD does not impose a specific markup. The above example uses standard RDoc markup formatting, but YARD also supports textile and markdown via the command-line switch or .yardopts file (see below). This means that you are free to use whatever formatting you like. This guide is actually written using markdown. YARD, however, does add a few important syntaxes that are processed no matter which markup formatting you use, such as tag support and inter-document linking. These syntaxes are discussed below.

Adding Tags to Documentation

The tag syntax that YARD uses is the same @tag-style syntax you may have seen if you've ever coded in Java, Python, PHP, Objective-C or a myriad of other languages. The following tag adds an author tag to your class:

# @author Loren Segal
class MyClass
end

To allow for large amounts of text, the @tag syntax will recognize any indented lines following a tag as part of the tag data. For example:

# @deprecated Use {#my_new_method} instead of this method because
#   it uses a library that is no longer supported in Ruby 1.9.
#   The new method accepts the same parameters.
def mymethod
end

List of Tags

A list of tags can be found in Tags

Reference Tags

To reduce the amount of duplication in writing documentation for repetitive code, YARD introduces "reference tags", which are not quite tags, but not quite docstrings either. In a sense, they are tag (and docstring) modifiers. Basically, any docstring (or tag) that begins with "(see OTHEROBJECT)" will implicitly link the docstring or tag to the "OTHEROBJECT", copying any data from that docstring/tag into your current object. Consider the example:

class MyWebServer
  # Handles a request
  # @param [Request] request the request object
  # @return [String] the resulting webpage
  def get(request) "hello" end

  # (see #get)
  def post(request) "hello" end
end

The above #post method takes the docstring and all tags (param and return) of the #get method. When you generate HTML documentation, you will see this duplication automatically, so you don't have to manually type it out. We can also add our own custom docstring information below the "see" reference, and whatever we write will be appended to the docstring:

# (see #get)
# @note This method may modify our application state!
def post(request) self.state += 1; "hello" end

Here we added another tag, but we could have also added plain text. The text must be appended after the (see ...) statement, preferably on a separate line.

Note that we don't have to "refer" the whole docstring. We can also link individual tags instead. Since "get" and "post" actually have different descriptions, a more accurate example would be to only refer our parameter and return tags:

class MyWebServer
  # Handles a GET request
  # @param [Request] request the request object
  # @return [String] the resulting webpage
  def get(request) "hello" end

  # Handles a POST request
  # @note This method may modify our application state!
  # @param (see #get)
  # @return (see #get)
  def post(request) self.state += 1; "hello" end
end

The above copies all of the param and return tags from #get. Note that you cannot copy individual tags of a specific type with this syntax.

Declaring Types

Some tags also have an optional "types" field which let us declare a list of types associated with the tag. For instance, a return tag can be declared with or without a types field.

# @return [String, nil] the contents of our object or nil
#   if the object has not been filled with data.
def validate; end

# We don't care about the "type" here:
# @return the object
def to_obj; end

The list of types is in the form [type1, type2, ...] and is mostly free-form, so we can also specify duck-types or constant values. For example:

# @param [#to_s] argname any object that responds to `#to_s`
# @param [true, false] argname only true or false

Note the the latter example can be replaced by the meta-type "Boolean", and numeric types can be replaced by "Number". These meta-types are by convention only, but are recommended.

List types can be specified in the form CollectionClass<ElementType, ...>. For instance, consider the following Array that holds a set of Strings and Symbols:

# @param [Array<String, Symbol>] list the list of strings and symbols.

We mentioned that these type fields are "mostly" free-form. In truth, they are defined "by convention". To view samples of common type specifications and recommended conventions for writing type specifications, see http://yardoc.org/types.html. Note that these conventions may change every now and then, although we are working on a more "formal" type specification proposal.

Inter-document Linking

YARD supports a special syntax to link to other code objects, URLs, files, or embed docstrings between documents. This syntax has the general form of {Name OptionalTitle} (where OptionalTitle can have spaces, but Name cannot).

Linking Objects

To link another "object" (class, method, module, etc.), use the format:

{ObjectName#method OPTIONAL_TITLE}
{Class::CONSTANT My constant's title}
{#method_inside_current_namespace}

Without an explicit title, YARD will use the relative path to the object as the link name. Note that you can also use relative paths inside the object path to refer to an object inside the same namespace as your current docstring.

Note that the @see tag automatically links its data. You should not use the link syntax in this tag:

# @see #methodname   <- Correct.
# @see {#methodname} <- Incorrect.

Linking URLs

URLs are also linked using this {...} syntax:

{http://example.com Optional Title}
{mailto:[email protected]}

Linking Files

Files can also be linked using this same syntax but by adding the file: prefix to the object name. Files refer to extra readme files you added via the command-line. Consider the following examples:

{file:docs/GettingStarted.md Getting Started}
{file:mypage.html Name#anchor}

As shown, you can also add an optional #anchor if the page is an HTML link.

Embedding Docstrings

We saw the (see ...) syntax above, which allowed us to link an entire docstring with another. Sometimes, however, we just want to copy docstring text without tags. Using the same {...} syntax, but using the include: prefix, we can embed a docstring (minus tags) at a specific point in the text.

# This class is cool
# @abstract
class Foo; end

# This is another class. {include:Foo} too!
class Bar; end

The docstring for Bar becomes: 

"This is another class. This class is cool too!"

Note that this prefix currently only works for objects.

Using YARD to Generate Documentation

yard Executable

YARD ships with a single executable aptly named yard. In addition to generating standard documentation for your project, you would use this tool if you wanted to:

  • Document all installed gems
  • Run a local documentation server
  • Generate UML diagrams using Graphviz
  • View ri-style documentation
  • Diff your documentation
  • Analyze documentation statistics.

The following commands are available in YARD 0.6.x (see yard help for a full list):

Usage: yard <command> [options]

Commands:
config   Views or edits current global configuration
diff     Returns the object diff of two gems or .yardoc files
doc      Generates documentation
gems     Builds YARD index for gems
graph    Graphs class diagram using Graphviz
help     Retrieves help for a command
ri       A tool to view documentation in the console like `ri`
server   Runs a local documentation server
stats    Prints documentation statistics on a set of files

Note that yardoc is an alias for yard doc, and yri is an alias for yard ri. These commands are maintained for backwards compatibility.

.yardopts Options File

Unless your documentation is very small, you'll end up needing to run yardoc with many options. The yardoc tool will use the options found in this file. It is recommended to check this in to your repository and distribute it with your source. This file is placed at the root of your project (in the directory you run yardoc from) and contains all of arguments you would otherwise pass to the command-line tool. For instance, if you often type:

yardoc --no-private --protected app/**/*.rb - README LEGAL COPYING

You can place the following into your .yardopts:

--no-private --protected app/**/*.rb - README LEGAL COPYING

This way, you only need to type:

yardoc

Any extra switches passed to the command-line now will be appended to your .yardopts options.

Note that options for yardoc are discussed in the README, and a full overview of the .yardopts file can be found in YARD::CLI::Yardoc.

Configuring YARD

YARD (0.6.2+) supports a global configuration file stored in ~/.yard/config. This file is stored as a YAML file and can contain arbitrary keys and values that can be used by YARD at run-time. YARD defines specific keys that are used to control various features, and they are listed in YARD::Config::DEFAULT_CONFIG_OPTIONS. A sample configuration file might look like:

:load_plugins: false
:ignored_plugins:
  - my_plugin
  - my_other_plugin
:autoload_plugins:
  - my_autoload_plugin
:safe_mode: false

You can also view and edit these configuration options from the commandline using the yard config command. To list your configuration, use yard config --list. To view a key, use yard config ITEM, and to set it, use yard config ITEM VALUE.

Extending YARD

There are many ways to extend YARD to support non-standard Ruby syntax (DSLs), add new meta-data tags or programmatically access the intermediate metadata and documentation from code. An overview of YARD's full architecture can be found in the Overview document.

For information on adding support for Ruby DSLs, see the Handlers and Parser architecture documents.

For information on adding extra tags, see Tags.

For information on accessing the data YARD stores about your documentation, look at the CodeObjects architecture document.

Templating YARD

In many cases you may want to change the style of YARD's templates or add extra information after extending it. The Templates architecture document covers the basics of how YARD's templating system works.

Plugin Support

As of 0.4, YARD will automatically load any gem named with the prefix of yard- or yard_. You can use this to load a custom plugin that extend YARD's functionality. A good example of this is the yard-rspec plugin, which adds RSpec specifications to your documentation (yardoc and yri). You can try it out by installing the gem or cloning the project and trying the example:

$ gem install yard-rspec -s http://gemcutter.org
or
$ git clone git://github.com/lsegal/yard-spec-plugin

YARD also provides a way to temporarily disable plugins on a per-user basis. To disable a plugin create the file ~/.yard/ignored_plugins with a list of plugin names separated by newlines. Note that the .yard directory might not exist, so you may need to create it.