ProcessModuleApiDoc

On-the-fly class documentation viewer for the ProcessWire CMS

What it does

Adds a "Module API Docs" menu entry in the ProcessWire backend that lets you view on-the-fly generated PHP doc for modules and other PHP files.

Requirements

• ProcessWire >= 3.0.127
• TextformatterMarkdownExtra (shipped with ProcessWire)
• PHP-Parser (see Installation further down)

Why

Running PHPDocumentor or other tools with the same purpose to view the inline documentation of a PHP class can more often than not become quite an effort.

This module parses and documents PHP files on the fly, so documentation doesn't have to be generated from scratch when the PHP file changes.

Module Status

Beta - try out at your own risk.

This module is best used on development systems only. There may be unforeseeable parsing issues and performance impatcts when using this on a production system. It is designed as a development aid anyway.

What it Displays

The documentation viewer displays the following information:

• Classes
• Public class properties with default value types
• Public class methods with return type and arguments (name, type, default value), and whether a method is static
• Hookable methods (with the same information detail as methods)
• Functions with return type and arguments (name, type, default value)

For each of those, any summary and description found in PHP Doc style comments is also displayed. Descriptions containing markdown are formatted accordingly. Included PHP snippets are highlighted.

Downsides

There aren't any links and dependencies between files and classes to see. That part is what makes the "grown up" tools complicated, slow and memory intensive. This module is intended as a lean solution to take a quick peek at properties, methods and hooks without having to dig through the source code.

Good to know

This module is not a perfect replacement for the API Reference included with the commercial ProDevTools module! Parts of the inline documentation used to assemble the official API reference cannot be parsed by this module, so they aren't displayed. If you are a professional ProcessWire developer and rely heavily on the intricacies of the official API, the Pro module will be much more convenient to browse the ProcessWire Core documentation.

This module takes a one-size-fits-all approach and is because of that quite selective in what information it extracts (and can extract) from the inline docs.

Installation

This module ships with a composer.json file for PHP-Parser, so installation should be straight forward. You do need to have shell access on the computer where you install this module, though.

• Extract the contents of the ZIP file into its own folder underneath site/modules
• Open a shell (bash, cmd, ...) and go into the module's folder
• Execute composer update to install PHP-Parser
• Go into the PW backend and select "Modules" -> "Refresh"
• Click "Install" for "TextformatterMarkdownExtra" from the Core modules if not installed yet
• Click "Install" for ProcessModuleApiDocs (Module Api Doc Viewer) from the Site modules
• Go to "Setup" -> "Module API Docs" and enjoy

Overview

Documentation View

Technical Stuff

The module uses PHP-Parser behind the scenes to create an abstract syntax tree for the selected PHP file. That syntax tree is then walked and normalized to create a representation of namespaces, classes, methods and properties. Additionally, comments are parsed in PHP Doc style.

Kudos

Big thanks go to Nikita Popov who built PHP-Parser.