Code Documentation for ASP.NET + VB.NET application

Question

We have a very old application dating back to ASP era which we are gradually refactoring to ASP.NET + VB.NET codebase.

It contains a lots of files with the below types:

aspx, asmx, ascx, vb, js (JavaScript), html, vbs (VBScript).

The backend database is SQL Server 2005 with lots of sprocs.

We would like to create a code documentation automatically generated from the comments in the code files. I liked Doxygen very much but seems like it does not support the above technologies. Can you please suggest some document generator tools, preferably a single tool or a group of tools?

Thanks a lot.

Ajit.

Answer 1

You can take a look at Microsoft's Sandcastle tool. I've used it many times, and it generates documentation based on the comments provided in your .NET code. If I remember correctly, it can also generate documentation for JavaScript libraries.

Answer 2

There are some out there:

SandCastle

NDOC

Answer 3

i've used SandCastle and it works too good if you have xml comments in your code.

You first enable xml documentation in your project by setting it in Project Properties -> Compile -> Generate XML Documentation.

Once done you may have to set treat warnings as errors, so that the studio can point out to you where and all the XML comments are missing.

To add an XML Comment, you place your cursor before a class definition or a function definition and type

///

This will automatically generate xml tags for documentation and then once you are done, you can import the project and start to build the documentation.

The good part is, if you have documented your classes well, when you use those functions in your application upon mouse over you can find the description which you wrote, much like how intellisense documentation works.

Let me know if you run into any other issues.

My last suggestion, make a hello world project and xml document it and get used to sandcastle with it.