How to include Doxygen method description in Xcode's autocomplete popup?

antonicelli picture antonicelli · Aug 17, 2013 · Viewed 10.4k times · Source

Using Xcode , I want to have the Doxygen description of my method below the autocomplete option, like alloc:

img

When writing, Xcode displays the autocomplete with the comments from the documentation. You can see in the image for example, when alloc is selected from the options, it says "Returns a new instance of the receiving class" and also links to the documentation.

I have been able to document my source code with Doxygen, for instance

/** 
 This does nothing
*/
 -(void) doNothing
{
    // This does nothing
}

and I get the expected results in the HTML file that Doxygen generates, yet I don't know how to make those results appear as suggestions in Xcode.

Answer

memmons picture memmons · Oct 15, 2013

Good news everyone! Xcode 5 now has built-in support for DOxygen style comments. So, you can comment your methods like this:

/*!
 * Provides an NSManagedObjectContext singleton appropriate for use on the main 
 * thread. If the context doesn't already exist it is created and bound to the 
 * persistent store coordinator for the application, otherwise the existing 
 * singleton contextis returned.
 * \param someParameter You can even add parameters
 * \returns The a shared NSManagedObjectContext for the application.
 */
+ (NSManagedObjectContext *)sharedContext;


Inline help will look like this:

inline help



Quick help will look like this:

quick help



And sidebar help will look like this:

sidebar help

Here's a handy code snippet you can add the your Xcode Code Snippet library to make method documentation simple:

/**
 <#description#>
 @param <#parameter#>
 @returns <#retval#>
 @exception <#throws#>
 */

doxygen code snippet

Now, you can just type "doxy" and poof! You have your doxygen template.