Checkstyle - Javadoc Comments

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JavadocPackage

Description

Checks that each Java package has a Javadoc file used for commenting. By default it only allows a package-info.java file, but can be configured to allow a package.html file.

An error will be reported if both files exist as this is not allowed by the Javadoc tool.

Properties

name	description	type	default value
allowLegacy	If set then allow the use of a package.html file.	boolean	false

Example

To configure the check:


	<module name="JavadocPackage"/>

Package

com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.checks.javadoc

Parent Module

Checker

JavadocType

Description

Checks Javadoc comments for class and interface definitions. By default, does not check for author or version tags. The scope to verify is specified using the Scope class and defaults to Scope.PRIVATE. To verify another scope, set property scope to one of the Scope constants. To define the format for an author tag or a version tag, set property authorFormat or versionFormat respectively to a regular expression.

Error messages about type parameters for which no param tags are present can be suppressed by defining property allowMissingParamTags.

Properties

name	description	type	default value
scope	visibility scope where Javadoc comments are checked	scope	private
excludeScope	visibility scope where Javadoc comments are not checked	scope	null
authorFormat	pattern for @author tag	regular expression	null (tag not required)
versionFormat	pattern for @version tag	regular expression	null (tag not required)
allowMissingParamTags	whether to ignore errors when a class has type parameters but does not have matching param tags in the javadoc.	boolean	false
allowUnknownTags	whether to ignore errors when a Javadoc tag is not recognised.	boolean	false
tokens	definitions to check	subset of tokens INTERFACE_DEF, CLASS_DEF	INTERFACE_DEF, CLASS_DEF,

Examples

To configure the default check:


	<module name="JavadocType"/>

To configure the check for public scope:


	<module name="JavadocType"> <property name="scope" value="public"/> </module>

To configure the check for an @author tag:


	<module name="JavadocType"> <property name="authorFormat" value="\S"/> </module>

To configure the check for a CVS revision version tag:


	<module name="JavadocType"> <property name="versionFormat" value="\$Revision.*\$"/> </module>

To configure the check for private classes only:


	<module name="JavadocType"> <property name="scope" value="private"/> <property name="excludescope" value="package"/> </module>

Package

com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.checks.javadoc

Parent Module

TreeWalker

JavadocMethod

Description

Checks the Javadoc of a method or constructor. By default, does not check for unused throws. To allow documented java.lang.RuntimeExceptions that are not declared, set property allowUndeclaredRTE to true. The scope to verify is specified using the Scope class and defaults to Scope.PRIVATE. To verify another scope, set property scope to a different scope.

Error messages about parameters and type parameters for which no param tags are present can be suppressed by defining property allowMissingParamTags. Error messages about exceptions which are declared to be thrown, but for which no throws tag is present can be suppressed by defining property allowMissingThrowsTags. Error messages about methods which return non-void but for which no return tag is present can be suppressed by defining property allowMissingReturnTag.

Javadoc is not required on a method that is tagged with the @Override annotation. However under Java 5 it is not possible to mark a method required for an interface (this was corrected under Java 6). Hence Checkstyle supports using the convention of using a single {@inheritDoc} tag instead of all the other tags.

Note that only inheritable items will allow the {@inheritDoc} tag to be used in place of comments. Static methods at all visibilities, private non-static methods and constructors are not inheritable.

For example, if the following method is implementing a method required by an interface, then the Javadoc could be done as:

/** {@inheritDoc} */
public int checkReturnTag(final int aTagIndex,
                          JavadocTag[] aTags,
                          int aLineNo)

The classpath may need to be configured to locate the class information. The classpath configuration is dependent on the mechanism used to invoke Checkstyle.

Properties

name	description	type	default value
scope	visibility scope where Javadoc comments are checked	scope	private
excludeScope	visibility scope where Javadoc comments are not checked	scope	null
allowUndeclaredRTE	whether to allow documented exceptions that are not declared if they are a subclass of java.lang.RuntimeException	boolean	false
allowThrowsTagsForSubclasses	whether to allow documented exceptions that are subclass of one of declared exception.	boolean	false
allowMissingParamTags	whether to ignore errors when a method has parameters but does not have matching param tags in the javadoc.	boolean	false
allowMissingThrowsTags	whether to ignore errors when a method declares that it throws exceptions but does have matching throws tags in the javadoc.	boolean	false
allowMissingReturnTag	whether to ignore errors when a method returns non-void type does have a return tag in the javadoc.	boolean	false
allowMissingJavadoc	whether to ignore errors when a method javadoc is missed.	boolean	false
allowMissingPropertyJavadoc	Whether to allow missing Javadoc on accessor methods for properties (setters and getters). The setter and getter methods must match exactly the structures below. public void setNumber(final int number) { mNumber = number; } public int getNumber() { return mNumber; } public boolean isSomething() { return false; }	boolean	false
logLoadErrors	This check may need to load exception classes mentioned in the @throws tag to check whether they are RuntimeExceptions. If loading the class fails, this property allows to control checkstyle's error handling. If set to false (the default) a classpath configuration problem is assumed and the TreeWalker stops operating on the class completely. If set to true, checkstyle assumes a typo or refactoring problem in the javadoc and logs the problem in the normal checkstyle report (potentially masking a configuration error).	boolean	false
suppressLoadErrors	When logLoadErrors is set to true, the TreeWalker completely processes a class and displays any problems with loading exceptions as checkstyle violations. When this property is set to true, the violations generated when logLoadErrors is set true are suppressed from being reported as violations in the checkstyle report.	boolean	false
tokens	definitions to check	subset of tokens METHOD_DEF, CTOR_DEF	METHOD_DEF, CTOR_DEF

Examples

To configure the default check:


	<module name="JavadocMethod"/>

To configure the check for public scope and to allow documentation of undeclared RuntimeExceptions:


	<module name="JavadocMethod"> <property name="scope" value="public"/> <property name="allowUndeclaredRTE" value="true"/> </module>

To configure the check for for public scope, to allow documentation of undeclared RuntimeExceptions, while ignoring any missing param tags is:


	<module name="JavadocMethod"> <property name="scope" value="public"/> <property name="allowUndeclaredRTE" value="true"/> <property name="allowMissingParamTags" value="true"/> </module>

To configure the check for methods which are in private , but not in protected scope:


	<module name="JavadocMethod"> <property name="scope" value="private"/> <property name="excludeScope" value="protected"/> </module>

Package

com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.checks.javadoc

Parent Module

TreeWalker

JavadocVariable

Description

Checks that variables have Javadoc comments.

Properties

name	description	type	default value
scope	visibility scope where Javadoc comments are checked	scope	private
excludeScope	visibility scope where Javadoc comments are not checked	scope	null

Examples

To configure the default check:


	<module name="JavadocVariable"/>

To configure the check for public scope:


	<module name="JavadocVariable"> <property name="scope" value="public"/> </module>

To configure the check for members which are in private, but not in protected scope:


	<module name="JavadocVariable"> <property name="scope" value="private"/> <property name="excludeScope" value="protected"/> </module>

Package

com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.checks.javadoc

Parent Module

TreeWalker

JavadocStyle

Description

Validates Javadoc comments to help ensure they are well formed. The following checks are performed:

Ensures the first sentence ends with proper punctuation (That is a period, question mark, or exclamation mark, by default). Javadoc automatically places the first sentence in the method summary table and index. With out proper punctuation the Javadoc may be malformed. All items eligible for the {@inheritDoc} tag are exempt from this requirement.
Check text for Javadoc statements that do not have any description. This includes both completely empty Javadoc, and Javadoc with only tags such as @param and @return.
Check text for incomplete HTML tags. Verifies that HTML tags have corresponding end tags and issues an "Unclosed HTML tag found:" error if not. An "Extra HTML tag found:" error is issued if an end tag is found without a previous open tag.
Check that a package Javadoc comment is well-formed (as described above) and NOT missing from any package-info.java files.
Check for allowed HTML tags. The list of allowed HTML tags is "a", "abbr", "acronym", "address", "area", "b", "bdo", "big", "blockquote", "br", "caption", "cite", "code", "colgroup", "del", "div", "dfn", "dl", "em", "fieldset", "h1" to "h6", "hr", "i", "img", "ins", "kbd", "li", "ol", "p", "pre", "q", "samp", "small", "span", "strong", "sub", "sup", "table", "tbody", "td", "tfoot", "th", "thread", "tr", "tt", "ul".

These checks were patterned after the checks made by the DocCheck doclet available from Sun.

Properties

name	description	type	default value
scope	visibility scope where Javadoc comments are checked	scope	private
excludeScope	visibility scope where Javadoc comments are not checked	scope	null
checkFirstSentence	Whether to check the first sentence for proper end of sentence.	boolean	true
endOfSentenceFormat	Format for matching the end of a sentence.	regular expression	([.?!][ \t\n\r\f<])\|([.?!]$)
checkEmptyJavadoc	Whether to check if the Javadoc is missing a describing text.	boolean	false
checkHtml	Whether to check for incomplete html tags.	boolean	true
tokens	definitions to check	subset of tokens INTERFACE_DEF, CLASS_DEF, METHOD_DEF, CTOR_DEF, VARIABLE_DEF	INTERFACE_DEF, CLASS_DEF, METHOD_DEF, CTOR_DEF, VARIABLE_DEF

Examples

To configure the default check:


	<module name="JavadocStyle"/>

To configure the check for public scope:


	<module name="JavadocStyle"> <property name="scope" value="public"/> </module>

To configure the check for javadoc which is in private, but not in package scope:


	<module name="JavadocStyle"> <property name="scope" value="private"/> <property name="excludeScope" value="package"/> </module>

To configure the check to turn off first sentence checking:


	<module name="JavadocStyle"> <property name="checkFirstSentence" value="false"/> </module>

Package

com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.checks

Parent Module

TreeWalker

WriteTag

Description

Outputs a JavaDoc tag as information. Can be used e.g. with the stylesheets that sort the report by author name. To define the format for a tag, set property tagFormat to a regular expression. This check uses two different severity levels. The normal one is used for reporting when the tag is missing. The additional one (tagSeverity) is used for the level of reporting when the tag exists.

Properties

name	description	type	default value
tag	Name of tag	String	null
tagFormat	Format of tag	regular expression	null
tagSeverity	Severity level when tag is found and printed	severity	info

Examples

An example of how to configure the check for printing author name is:


	<module name="WriteTag"> <property name="tag" value="@author"/> <property name="tagFormat" value="\S"/> </module>

An example of how to configure the check to print warnings if an "@incomplete" tag is found, and not print anything if it is not found:

<module name="WriteTag">
   <property name="tag" value="@incomplete"/>
   <property name="tagFormat" value="\S"/>
   <property name="severity" value="ignore"/>
   <property name="tagSeverity" value="warning"/>
</module>

Package

com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.checks

Parent Module

TreeWalker