Associating and using javadoc comments with java elements.

sude

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Feb 14, 2006, 7:59:20 PM2/14/06

to

Hi!,
I need a way to associate a javadoc comment with the corresponding
Java Element. And access that programmatically in Java.
e.g. For the code below
/**
* This is my Class
*/
public class X {
…
}

I need something like
<sometype> myJavaElement = <something which gives class X>
myJavaElement.getComment();

One way which I was thinking of was using the AntLR and modifying the
lexer code generated by the AntLR. But was wondering that this problem
might (should ) have been faced by other people and if there exists
an open source tool which can be used for this purpose.
I looked at qdox but that I guess will not be able to handle package
level comments which is a basic requirement for me.

Any help is highly appreciated and highly awaited.

Thanks a lot,
Sudhanshu

Roedy Green

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Feb 14, 2006, 11:29:44 PM2/14/06

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On 14 Feb 2006 16:59:20 -0800, "sude" <sudhans...@gmail.com>
wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said :

>One way which I was thinking of was using the AntLR and modifying the
>lexer code generated by the AntLR. But was wondering that this problem

>might (should =EF=81=8A) have been faced by other people and if there exists

>an open source tool which can be used for this purpose.
>I looked at qdox but that I guess will not be able to handle package
>level comments which is a basic requirement for me.

I don't follow why you are doing this or what precisely you are
tracking. However, there are two techniques in general for tackling
this sort of problem.

1. annotations:

2. custom Javadoc comments you handle with a custom Doclet to generate
the HTML or other summaries.

See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/annotations.html
http://mindprod.com/jgloss/javadoc.html

--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Java custom programming, consulting and coaching.

Owen Jacobson

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Feb 15, 2006, 9:45:14 AM2/15/06

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On Tue, 14 Feb 2006 16:59:20 -0800, sude wrote:

> Hi!,
> I need a way to associate a javadoc comment with the corresponding
> Java Element. And access that programmatically in Java.

Comments (including "javadoc comments") are not retained by the compiler.
End of story. If you need some descriptive information about a class at
runtime, either store it in an annotation with runtime retention or create
a lookup table mapping symbols (class names, packages, class member names,
et cetera) to the information you need and access that.

Richard Wheeldon

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Feb 15, 2006, 2:59:56 PM2/15/06

to

sude wrote:
> I need a way to associate a javadoc comment with the corresponding
> Java Element. And access that programmatically in Java.

Use a custom doclet, write <method,comment> pairs to some output file.
Read them back as required,

Richard

sude

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Feb 25, 2006, 3:13:59 PM2/25/06

to

Well this requires an assumption on my part that the comments that are
provided in the java code are given through a java doc tag. Right? But
I do not want to impose any such restriction to the user. In my opinion
JDT would need to solve this problem to show the javadoc comment
associated with any element.
Am not sure if they have any lean/minimal component to solve this.
Anybody has any idea?

sudhanshu