IXD - documentation compiler for AX

Ixd is command line tool which can generate API documentation for AX projects. Ixd transpiles .st files to yaml files which can be used in Docfx documentation tool.

Quick start

1. Install latest docfx

Enter following code in terminal:

dotnet tool update -g docfx

2. Create new docfx project

docfx init --quiet

Docfx project will be generated with following folder structure:

├───api <-- this should be output folder of ixd
├───apidoc
├───articles
├───images
├───src          
└───_site
    ├───api
    ├───articles
    ├───fonts
    └───styles

3. Install ixd tool

dotnet tool install AXSharp.ixd --prerelease --local

4. Generate documentation with ixd

dotnet ixd -x $PATH_TO_AX_PROJECT -o $PATH_TO_API_FOLDER

where:

$PATH_TO_AX_PROJECT -- is path to AX project, which contains apax.yml file

$PATH_TO_API_FOLDER -- is path to api output folder, which is located in docfx project

5. Build and run docfx docset

Enter following command in docfx_project project directory:

docfx docfx.json --serve

Now you can preview the website on http://localhost:8080/api/.

Website should look something like this:

example web

Notes

Ixd is still in early development, so some features may be missing and bugs may occur. Currently ixd can generate documentation for following elements:

  • Namespaces
    • Classes
      • Methods
      • Properties
    • Interfaces
    • Types

XML comments

Ixd supports extracting XML comment formats from .st files into API documentation.

Following XML tags are currently supported:

  • <summary>
  • <params>
  • <returns>
  • <example>
  • <remarks>
  • <code>
  • <c>
  • <see>
  • <seealso>