How works ESSimpleDoc

The entry point of the app is the index.js file. At this stage, we only call the loadApp ( ) method of the AppLoader class.

The Apploader.loadApp ( ) method:

• validate the parameters given by the user
• create a list of .js files found in the dest directory or subdirectories
• copy the css file to the dest directory
• and finally call the buildFiles ( ) method of the DocBuilder class with the list of .js files

The DocBuilder.buildFiles ( ) method:

• parse the .js files with the @babel/parser
• extract from the ast node created by the @babel/parse the 'ClassDeclaration' and 'VariableDeclaration' nodes.
• from the ast nodes, build containers with the data needed for creating the html files, using the classes ClassDocBuilder, VariableDocBuilder and CommentsDocBuilder.

Containers with data are instances of the classes VariableDoc, MethodOrPropertyDoc, ClassDoc, TypeDescription, and CommentsDoc:

• VariableDoc is used to store the documentation extracted from 'VariableDeclaration' ast nodes
• ClassDoc is used to store the documentation extracted from 'ClassDeclaration' ast nodes. Each ClassDoc instance contains a collection of MethodOrPropertyDoc
• MethodOrPropertyDoc is used to store the documentation extracted from 'ClassPrivateProperty', 'ClassProperty', 'ClassPrivateMethod', and 'ClassMethod' ast node that are childs of the 'ClassDeclaration' node.
• CommentsDoc is used to store the documentation extracted from the leading comments of each ast node. Each VariableDoc, ClassDoc and MethodOrPropertyDoc contains one CommentsDoc.
• TypeDescription is a container used to store types found in the @type, @return and @param tags of the the leading comments.

When all the doc containers are created, the documentation is controlled (when the --validate parameter is present ), using the DocsValidator class.

And finally, the html files are created from the doc containers:

• for the classes by the ClassHtmlBuilder
• for the variables by the VariablesHtmlBuilder
• for the sources by the SourceHtmlBuilder
• and for the home page by the IndexHtmlBuilder

The NavHtmlBuilder class is responsible of the creation of the <nav> html tag present in all the html pages

The global object theLinkBuilder is a container for all the html links created.

The global object theConfig is a container for the program's configuration.

The FileWriter class is a simple helper class to write files.