README.docify.md

Docify

This crate provides a simple set of rust macros, namely #[docify::export] and docify::embed!, that allow you to dynamically embed tests and examples from the current crate or sub-crates of the current crate directly within rust docs comments, with the option to make these examples runnable.

The intent behind docify is to allow you to showcase your best examples and tests directly in your docs, without having to update them in two places every time there is a change. It also encourages a methodology where crate authors better document their tests, since they can now showcase these directly in their doc comments.

All-in-all this is a much better workflow than having doc examples isolated within your docs, since you can avoid boilerplate from the surrounding code and just focus on showcasing the item you want to highlight.

General Usage

Using docify is simple. First mark the tests/examples/items that you wish to embed with #[docify::export], such as the following:

#[docify::export]
fn some_example() {
  assert_eq!(2 + 2, 4);
  assert_eq!(2 + 3, 5);
  assert_eq!(3 + 3, 6);
}

You can then embed this item directly in doc comments using the docify::embed macro:

/// These are some docs about an item. You can embed examples, tests, and
/// other items directly into docs using the following macro:
#[doc = docify::embed!("source/file/path.rs", some_example)]
/// More docs can go here, the example will embed itself inline exactly
/// where you reference it.
pub struct SomeItem;

This will result in the following expanded doc comments:

/// These are some docs about an item. You can embed examples,
/// tests, and other items directly into docs using the
/// following macro:
/// ```ignore
/// fn some_example() {
///   assert_eq!(2 + 2, 4);
///   assert_eq!(2 + 3, 5);
///   assert_eq!(3 + 3, 6);
/// }
/// ```
/// More docs can go here, the example will embed itself inline
/// exactly where you reference it.
pub struct SomeItem;

You can embed any item capable of having an attribute macro attached to it.

Runnable Examples

Note that you can also use the embed_run! version of the macro to make the embedded example compile/run as part of doc tests, which is desirable in certain situations even though typically the example will already be running/compiling somewhere else in your project.

Markdown

A newly added feature allows compiling markdown files with HTML comments that contain regular docify::embed!(..) calls, with the option to compile entire directories of files or individual files.

In fact, this README.md file is automatically compiled whenever cargo doc is run on this crate, resulting in the following codeblock to populate dynamically:

If you look at the source code for .README.docify.md, you'll notice we use the following HTML comment to perform the above embedding:

<!-- docify::embed!("examples/samples.rs", some_example) -->

See compile_markdown! for more info.

More Info

For more documentation, features, and examples, check out the docs!