Doxygen Quick Reference

Index

1. Commenting styles
2. Qt Style C++ Class Example
3. JavaDoc Style C++ Class Example
4. Special Tags
5. Structural Tags

1. Commenting Styles

Qt Style:
/*!
.... text ....
*/

Qt Style Single line
//! .... one line of text ....


JavaDoc Style:
/**
* .... text ....
*/

JavaDoc Style Single line
/// .... one line of text ....


Doxygen only allows one brief and one detailed description for each declaration/definition. If there is a brief description before a declaration, and one before the a definition, only the one before the declaration will be used. If the same situation occurs for a detailed description the one before the definition is preferred and the one before the declaration will be ignored.
A useful method is to have the brief documentation with the declaration in the header file, and the detailed documentation with the definition in the source file.

Note: Standard C/C++ comments are ignored by doxygen, but will be included in the code listing for that file.

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2. Qt Style C++ Class Example

Here is an example of a C++ class using Qt Style documentation.
The IEpair class from include/iepairs.h is used here. The html result of using these comments can be found here.

Note: The resulting html was generated from a single file. If it were generated as part of the whole documentation, many of the function names and variables would be hyperlinks to their definitions.

//! Virtual class to allow plugin operations on entity pairs
/*!
  \todo Write more complete documentation for this class so that it's use
  is clear
			
  An interface to entity keys and key pairs that allows plugins to;
  read and write entity keys and key values, get a key value as a
  vec3_t
*/
class IEpair
{
  public:
    //! Increment the number of references to this object
    virtual void IncRef () = 0;
				
    //! Decrement the reference count
    virtual void DecRef () = 0;
				
    //! Get a vector from a key
    virtual void GetVectorForKey( char* key, vec3_t vec ) = 0;
				
    //! Get a float from a key
    virtual float FloatForKey( char *key ) = 0;
				
    //! Get a string (char *) from a key
    virtual char* ValueForKey( char *key ) = 0;
				
    //! Set a key value to char *value
    /*!
      \param key The (char *) containing the keyname
      \param value The (char *) to set the key value to
    */
    virtual void SetKeyValue( char *key, char *value ) = 0;
				
    //! Get a vec3_t for the entities origin
    virtual void GetEntityOrigin( vec3_t vec ) = 0;
				
    //! Compute the rotated bounds of the BBox based on "angle" and "angles" keys
    virtual void CalculateRotatedBounds( vec3_t mins, vec3_t maxs ) = 0;
};

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3. JavaDoc Style C++ Class Example

/// Virtual class to allow plugin operations on entity pairs
/**
  * @todo Write more complete documentation for this class so that it's use
  * is clear
  *	
  * An interface to entity keys and key pairs that allows plugins to;
  * read and write entity keys and key values, get a key value as a
  * vec3_t
  */
class IEpair
{
  public:
    /// Increment the number of references to this object
    virtual void IncRef () = 0;
				
    /// Decrement the reference count
    virtual void DecRef () = 0;
				
    /// Get a vector from a key
    virtual void GetVectorForKey( char* key, vec3_t vec ) = 0;
				
    /// Get a float from a key
    virtual float FloatForKey( char *key ) = 0;
				
    /// Get a string (char *) from a key
    virtual char* ValueForKey( char *key ) = 0;
				
    /** Set a key value to char *value
      * @param key The (char *) containing the keyname
      * @param value The (char *) to set the key value to
      */
    virtual void SetKeyValue( char *key, char *value ) = 0;
				
    //! Get a vec3_t for the entities origin
    virtual void GetEntityOrigin( vec3_t vec ) = 0;
				
    //! Compute the rotated bounds of the BBox based on "angle" and "angles" keys
    virtual void CalculateRotatedBounds( vec3_t mins, vec3_t maxs ) = 0;
};

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4. Special Tags

Special tags using the Qt style begin with a " \ ", or using JavaDoc style a " @ " (the two should not be mixed).

Common special tags

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5. Structural Tags

These are used to document a named object, and are not required to be located near that object definition or declaration. This allows the documentation for an object to be located anywhere in the doxygen input files. The exception to this rule however, is that these documentation blocks cannot be within the body of a function or within C style comment blocks. All structural commands are preceded by either a " \ " or a " @ ", depending on the documentation style, and require one or more parameters to specify the name of the object the description is referring to.

An example of the \file structural tag:

/*! \file iepairs.h
    \brief One line documentation for this file
    \author Author(s)
    Long description of this file
*/

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