Generating Help File in C#
An interesting feature of the C# compiler is to generate XML documentation from the comments. C# compiler reads specially formatted comments and generates XML documentation from the comments. You can then displays this XML on the Web to provide an extra level of documentation to developers who need to understand the structure of your applications.
Pre-requisites to generate XML documentation from the comments are:
* Use three slashes for comments(///). The C# compiler does not generate any XML Documentation for any comments that do not begin with three slashes. Nor does the C# compiler generates any XML documentation for regular, multi line, comments.
* Use the /doc option of the C# compiler to specify the name of the file that should contain the generated XML documentation.
Example: Demonstrate XML documentation from Comments
Step1: In the first step we create the C# code file.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Windows.Forms;
namespace _CSharpApplication
{
static class Program
{
///
/// The main entry point for the application.
/// Developed By : C# Team
/// Developed On : 21 Oct,07
///
[ STAThread ]
static void Main ()
{
Application .EnableVisualStyles();
Application .SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault( false );
System.Console.WriteLine( "StartUp for C# World!" );
}
}
}
Step2: The following command is used to generate the help file. The command will create two files i.e. “Program.exe" and other is “ProgramHelpFile.xml" .
Command: csc /doc: HelpFile.xml ProgramFile.cs
Output:-
The following xml will be generated by the above command.
ProgramHelpFile.xml
The main entry point for the application.
Developed By : C# Team
Developed On : 21 Oct,07
Note: -Main portion of XML documentation is found in
Other Important Tags:
The following is the list of more help file tags which can be used in the C#.
1.
2. :- Tag to indicate that multiple lines of text in your comments should be treated as code: E.g.
///
/// Argument[0]: command line argument 1
/// Argument[1]: command line argument 2
/// Argument[2]: command line argument 3
///
3.
///
/// Raised if the input is less than 0.
///
4.
///
/// Everyone can access Main ().
///
5.
///
/// The Main () function is the entry point into the
/// application. The CLR will call Main () to start
/// the application after the application loads
///
