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About the Book

Nearly every modern language, including Swift, offers some kind of structured comment system that documents APIs for developers that consume them. The new Swift 2 structured documentation uses a mix of custom keywords and Markdown syntax to create a simple, easy-to-apply annotation tool. By leveraging this industry-standard tech, Apple opens up its structured documentation system to an entirely new generation with an absolute minimum of training needed to get up to speed.

This short book introduces Swift's documentation markup system using simple, illustrated examples, with plenty of discussion of best practices. You'll discover the components that make up Swift's structured comment system and learn how to best integrate them into your own code. For the most part, I've built this material out of examples from Swift's standard library, from release notes, and by reverse-engineering extensible style-sheet specifications. While I've tried to include a thorough list of legal tokens, I've focused on supplementing core details with a thoughtful discussion of best practices that will stand the test of time as Apple updates this system.

I hope you find this book to be a useful and worthy addition to your development library. I've had a great time writing it. Hopefully you'll have a great time reading it. Thank you for purchasing a copy!

Updates:

1.2 Added CommonMark update, updated playground section, added coverage of video embedding, added various tweaks and enhancements based on material found in Apple's open source content.

1.1.7 Added note about upcoming 7.3 Playground Doc keywords (experiment, note, and important) plus link to blog coverage.

1.1.6 Added coverage of Xcode 7.3/Swift 2.2's new keywords (recommended, recommendedover, keyword)

1.1.5 Expanded guidelines with Apple's updated API Design Guidelines document. There isn't a big difference beyond using "s" at the end of verbs when writing descriptions.

1.1.4 Added coverage of VVDocumenter's Xcode plug-in, updated Jazzy coverage

1.1.3 Errata fixes. Thank you Juan Diego.

1.1.2 Minor updates after Swift open sourced with API guidelines incorporated into a couple of discussions.

1.1.1 Added revision history (thanks, Adolofo Vera Blasco)

1.1.0 Major additions include expanded markup discussions, third party tool overviews, playground rich text documents: approximately 30% additional content.

1.0.1 Minor style fixes

About the Author

erica sadun

@ericasadun

Erica Sadun writes lots of books. When not writing, she's a full time parent of geeks who are brushing up on their world domination skills. According to her academic dosimeter, she's acquired more education than any self-respecting person might consider wise. She enjoys deep diving into technology and has written, co-written, and contributed to dozens of books about computing and digital media. Sadun has blogged at TUAW, Ars Technica, O'Reilly, and Lifehacker. If you have any comments or questions about her ebooks, please drop an email at erica@ericasadun.com. Follow the author on her blog and Twitter (@ericasadun) to keep up with news and ebook announcements