Gitroom - Libraries

javadoc-cleanup

0

Create mobile-friendly documentation sites by post-processing javadocs in GitHub Actions

Miscellaneous

github-actions
documentation
javadoc
mobile-browsers

javadoc-cleanup

cicirello/javadoc-cleanup - Create mobile-friendly documentation sites by post-processing javadocs in GitHub Actions

Check out all of our GitHub Actions: https://actions.cicirello.org/

About

GitHub ActionsGitHub release (latest by date) Count of Action Users
Build Statusbuild CodeQL
Source InfoLicense GitHub top language
SupportGitHub Sponsors Liberapay Ko-Fi

The javadoc-cleanup GitHub action is a utility to tidy up javadocs prior to deployment to an API documentation website, assumed hosted on GitHub Pages. It performs the following functions:

  • Improves mobile browsing experience: It inserts <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> within the <head> of each html file that was generated by javadoc, if not already present. Beginning with Java 16, javadoc properly defines the viewport, whereas prior to Java 16, it does not.
  • Strips out any timestamps inserted by javadoc: The timestamps cause a variety of version control issues for documentation sites maintained in git repositories. Javadoc has an option -notimestamp to direct javadoc not to insert timestamps (which we recommend that you also use). However, at the present time there appears to be a bug (in OpenJDK 11's javadoc, and possibly other versions), where the timestamp is not ommitted in the overview-summary.html generated by javadoc.
  • It is also capable of generating and inserting the canonical URL for each page, of the form <link rel="canonical" href="https://URL.TO.YOUR.API.DOC.WEBSITE/page.html">.
  • Enables inserting a user-defined block into the head of each javadoc generated page. For example, if you want to insert a link to your site's favicon, or a referrer policy, or really anything else that is valid in the head of an html file.
  • In projects that use the Java Platform Module System (JPMS), javadoc redirects the root index.html to the page of a module, and under certain other circumstances to a package page. Such redirected pages should direct search engines to noindex, but javadoc doesn't do so. The javadoc-cleanup action inserts a noindex, follow directive in any such redirected pages.

The javadoc-cleanup GitHub action is designed to be used in combination with other GitHub Actions. For example, it does not commit and push the modified javadocs. See the Example Workflows for examples of combining with other actions in your workflow. We also have links to a few projects that are actively using the javadoc-cleanup action in the section Examples in Other Projects.

Table of Contents

The remainder of the documentation is organized into the following sections:

Inputs

path-to-root

The path to the root of the website relative to the root of the repository. The default is . which is appropriate in cases where you are using a gh-pages branch for your documentation site. If you are instead using this for a GitHub Pages site in the docs directory, then just pass docs for this input.

base-url-path

This is the url to the root of your website. If you provide this input, then javadoc-cleanup will generate and insert a canonical link for each page in the header, of the form: <link rel="canonical" href="https://URL.TO.YOUR.API.DOC.WEBSITE/page.html">, assuming base-url-path equals "https://URL.TO.YOUR.API.DOC.WEBSITE/" and assuming page.html is the relevant filename.

user-defined-block

This input can be used if there is anything else that you want to insert into the head of every javadoc generated page. For example if you want to insert links to the site's favicon. Here are a couple examples.

Perhaps you have an favicon.svg in the images directory of the documentation site, then the following will insert a link to it in the head of every javadoc generated page:

    - name: Tidy up the javadocs
      uses: cicirello/javadoc-cleanup@v1
      with:
        path-to-root: docs
        user-defined-block: |
          <link rel="icon" href="/images/favicon.svg" sizes="any" type="image/svg+xml">

In the above, the | is what YAML calls a block scalar, essentially a multiline string. In the example above, the string itself is only a single line, however, the advantage of using this syntax is to avoid the need to escape all of the quote characters.

Perhaps there are multiple lines you want to insert into the head of the pages. This next example shows this using a case where perhaps you have both svg and png versions of your favicon.

    - name: Tidy up the javadocs
      uses: cicirello/javadoc-cleanup@v1
      with:
        path-to-root: docs
        user-defined-block: |
          <link rel="icon" href="/images/favicon.svg" sizes="any" type="image/svg+xml">
          <link rel="icon" href="/images/favicon.png" type="image/png">

Please note that the action does not attempt to check the syntax of your user-defined-block. It simply inserts it verbatim into the head of every javadoc generated page.

Outputs

modified-count

This output is the count of the number of html pages modified by the action.

Example Workflows

Prerequisites of Examples

  • The example workflows assume that javadoc is run via Maven, and it also assumes that Maven's default directory structure is in use (e.g., that output is to a target directory). You should put Maven's target directory in your .gitignore. The example workflows include a step that copies the generated documentation from Maven's default of target/site/apidocs to the docs folder (assuming you are serving the documentation via GitHub Pages in the docs folder).
  • Depending upon the version of Java, javadoc may generate multiple zip files of its search index, in addition to the JavaScript versions of those very search index files. This is true of javadoc for Java 11, although more recent Java versions have eliminated the zip files. These zip files are completely unnecessary. The documentation will use the js versions of these. Additionally, the zip files are problematic for documentation sites served from a git repository because they will appear as if they changed every time javadoc runs, even if nothing has actually changed (e.g., due to time-stamping). We strongly recommend that for these reasons you add the five zip files to your .gitignore. They are module-search-index.zip, package-search-index.zip, type-search-index.zip, member-search-index.zip, and tag-search-index.zip. They are functionally unnecessary, as the .js counterparts alone are sufficient for javadoc's search to work.

Basic Syntax

You can run the action with a step in yuor workflow like this (assuming that your javadocs are in docs directory:

    - name: Tidy up the javadocs
      uses: cicirello/javadoc-cleanup@v1
      with:
        path-to-root: docs

In the above example, the major release version was used, which ensures that you'll be using the latest patch level release, including any bug fixes, etc. If you prefer, you can also use a specific version such as with:

    - name: Tidy up the javadocs
      uses: cicirello/javadoc-cleanup@v1.3.7
      with:
        path-to-root: docs

Example 1: Basic example without canonical links

This example workflow is triggered by a push of java source files. After setting up java, Maven is used to generate the javadocs, and the javadocs are then copied from Maven default target location to the docs directory where the GitHub Pages documentation site is assumed hosted. After which, the javadoc-cleanup action runs. The workflow then outputs the number of modified html pages (for logging purposes). The workflow then commits the changes (if any). This example doesn't push the changes, but you can easily add a git push after the commit, or add another action to handle that.

name: docs

on:
  push:
    branches: [ master ]
    paths: [ '**.java' ]

jobs:
  api-website:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - name: Checkout the repo
      uses: actions/checkout@v4

    - name: Set up the Java JDK
      uses: actions/setup-java@v3
      with:
        java-version: '17'
        distribution: 'adopt'

    - name: Build docs with Maven
      run: mvn javadoc:javadoc

    - name: Copy to Documentation Website Location
      run: |
        rm -rf docs
        cp -rf target/site/apidocs/. docs

    - name: Tidy up the javadocs
      id: tidy
      uses: cicirello/javadoc-cleanup@v1
      with:
        path-to-root: docs
    
    - name: Log javadoc-cleanup output
      run: |
        echo "modified-count = ${{ steps.tidy.outputs.modified-count }}"
    
    - name: Commit documentation changes
      run: |
        if [[ `git status --porcelain` ]]; then
          git config --global user.name 'YOUR NAME HERE'
          git config --global user.email 'YOUR-GITHUB-USERID@users.noreply.github.com'
          git add -A
          git commit -m "Automated API website updates."
        fi

Example 2: Basic example with canonical links

This example workflow is mostly the same as above, except it also generates and inserts canonical links in each javadoc page.

name: docs

on:
  push:
    branches: [ master ]
    paths: [ '**.java' ]

jobs:
  api-website:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - name: Checkout the repo
      uses: actions/checkout@v4

    - name: Set up the Java JDK
      uses: actions/setup-java@v3
      with:
        java-version: '17'
        distribution: 'adopt'

    - name: Build docs with Maven
      run: mvn javadoc:javadoc

    - name: Copy to Documentation Website Location
      run: |
        rm -rf docs
        cp -rf target/site/apidocs/. docs

    - name: Tidy up the javadocs
      id: tidy
      uses: cicirello/javadoc-cleanup@v1
      with:
        base-url-path: https://URL.FOR.YOUR.WEBSITE.GOES.HERE/
        path-to-root: docs
    
    - name: Log javadoc-cleanup output
      run: |
        echo "modified-count = ${{ steps.tidy.outputs.modified-count }}"
    
    - name: Commit documentation changes
      run: |
        if [[ `git status --porcelain` ]]; then
          git config --global user.name 'YOUR NAME HERE'
          git config --global user.email 'YOUR-GITHUB-USERID@users.noreply.github.com'
          git add -A
          git commit -m "Automated API website updates."
        fi

Example 3: Combining with other GitHub actions

This example combines the javadoc-cleanup action with other actions. Specifically, it uses the cicirello/generate-sitemap action to generate a sitemap for the documentation website, and the peter-evans/create-pull-request action to create a pull request with the changes. Note that for this example, the checkout action is called with fetch-depth: 0 because generate-sitemap needs the complete commit history. This is unnecessary for usage of the javadoc-cleanup action alone.

name: docs

on:
  push:
    branches: [ master ]
    paths: [ '**.java' ]

jobs:
  api-website:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - name: Checkout the repo
      uses: actions/checkout@v4
      with:
        fetch-depth: 0 

    - name: Set up the Java JDK
      uses: actions/setup-java@v3
      with:
        java-version: '17'
        distribution: 'adopt'
    
    - name: Build docs with Maven
      run: mvn javadoc:javadoc

    - name: Copy to Documentation Website Location
      run: |
        rm -rf docs
        cp -rf target/site/apidocs/. docs
    
    - name: Tidy up the javadocs
      id: tidy
      uses: cicirello/javadoc-cleanup@v1
      with:
        path-to-root: docs
        base-url-path: https://URL.FOR.YOUR.WEBSITE.GOES.HERE/
    
    - name: Log javadoc-cleanup output
      run: |
        echo "modified-count = ${{ steps.tidy.outputs.modified-count }}"
    
    - name: Commit documentation changes
      run: |
        if [[ `git status --porcelain` ]]; then
          git config --global user.name 'YOUR NAME HERE'
          git config --global user.email 'YOUR-GITHUB-USERID@users.noreply.github.com'
          git add -A
          git commit -m "Automated API website updates."
        fi

    - name: Generate the sitemap
      id: sitemap
      uses: cicirello/generate-sitemap@v1
      with:
        base-url-path: https://URL.FOR.YOUR.WEBSITE.GOES.HERE/
        path-to-root: docs
        
    - name: Create Pull Request
      uses: peter-evans/create-pull-request@v3.8.2
      with:
        title: "Automated API website updates."
        commit-message: "Automated API documentation website updates."

Examples in Other Projects

If you would like to see examples where the action is actively used, here are a few repositories that are actively using the javadoc-cleanup action. The table provides a link to repositories using the action, and direct links to the relevant workflow as well as to the api documentation sites that result from the workflow.

RepositoryWorkflowJavadocs
Chips-n-Salsadocs.ymlhttps://chips-n-salsa.cicirello.org/api/
JavaPermutationToolsdocs.ymlhttps://jpt.cicirello.org/api/

Built With

The javadoc-cleanup action uses the following:

Blog Posts

Here is a selection of blog posts about javadoc-cleanup on DEV.to:

Support the Project

You can support the project in a number of ways:

  • Starring: If you find the javadoc-cleanup action useful, consider starring the repository.
  • Sharing with Others: Consider sharing it with others who you feel might find it useful.
  • Reporting Issues: If you find a bug or have a suggestion for a new feature, please report it via the Issue tracker.
  • Contributing Code: If there is an open issue that you think you can help with, submit a pull request.
  • Sponsoring: You can also consider becoming a sponsor.

License

The scripts and documentation for this GitHub action are released under the MIT License.