But if you have already tried it, you would have noticed that now ActionScript and MXML editors show ASDoc documentation when you hover over variables/method/class names. See screen shot below:

This means that you can now see the documentation as you . . . → Read More: Creating SWC files with asdoc comments..]]> Have you tried the latest Flash Builder? If not, the latest beta can be downloaded from http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashbuilder4/?sdid=EUHSU

But if you have already tried it, you would have noticed that now ActionScript and MXML editors show ASDoc documentation when you hover over variables/method/class names. See screen shot below:

This means that you can now see the documentation as you are writing code. You can see the method/variable signature or any other documentation associated with any of the class elements. And for all this you don’t need to open the language reference in a separate browser window or search for the documentation.

Behind the scenes Flash Builder pulls this information from the Flex SDK swc files and the ASDoc info is stored in XML files inside the SWC files. For all nightly builds of Flex SDK, the swcs will come with these ASDoc XML files. In case you want to add similar ASDoc XML files to your custom swcs, you can do that too. Currently there is no single command to generate swc with ASDoc XML files, it is done in three simple steps. And the three steps are:

1. Generate SWC
2. Generate doc XML Files using ASDoc tool
3. Update SWC with doc XML fIles

I hope you already know how to generate a swc file. If not, take a look at http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=compilers_22.html
In order to generate the doc XML files using ASDoc tool, you will have to run the asdoc tool using -keep-xml=true and -skip-xsl=true
A swc file is a compressed file, so to update it (with doc XML files) you can simply use a zip command.

For reference, you can also look at the build.xml file in the framework project of the Flex SDK. Following is the “doc” target which performs step #2 and #3:

<target name="doc" depends="clean-temp-docs" description="updates framework.swc with asdoc xml">
		<!-- Load the <asdoc> task. We can't do this at the <project> level -->
		<!-- because targets that run before flexTasks.jar gets built would fail. -->
		<taskdef resource="flexTasks.tasks" classpath="${FLEX_HOME}/lib/flexTasks.jar"/>
 
	    <condition property="asdoc.jvm.args" value="-Xmx384m">
	        <os family="windows"/>
	    </condition>
 
	    <condition property="asdoc.jvm.args" value="-Xmx512m">
	        <os family="mac"/>
	    </condition>
 
	    <condition property="asdoc.jvm.args" value="-Xmx512m">
	        <os family="unix"/>
	    </condition>
 
		<!-- Call asdoc to generate dita xml files -->
		<asdoc output="${FLEX_HOME}/tempDoc" lenient="true" failonerror="true" keep-xml="true" skip-xsl="true" fork="true">
		    <compiler.source-path path-element="${basedir}/src"/>
		    <doc-classes class="FrameworkClasses"/>
		    <doc-namespaces uri="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml"/>
		    <namespace uri="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" manifest="${basedir}/manifest.xml"/>
		    <jvmarg line="${asdoc.jvm.args}"/>
		</asdoc>
 
		<!-- updates framework.swc with asdoc xml -->
		<zip destfile="${FLEX_HOME}/frameworks/locale/en_US/framework_rb.swc" update="true">
		    <zipfileset dir="${FLEX_HOME}/tempDoc/tempdita" prefix="docs">
			    <include name="*.*"/>
				<exclude name="ASDoc_Config.xml"/>
				<exclude name="overviews.xml"/>
		    </zipfileset>
		</zip>
	</target>

So give it a try, and if you find any bugs you can log them at http://bugs.adobe.com/flex

Now you don’t have to repeat the parameter because you can now use the . . . → Read More: Setting ASDoc description for packages]]> So you have a lot of packages and you want to add description for all your package for ASDoc? You can use the -packages.package parameter but it can be tedious to repeat the ASDoc command line parameter (-packages.package) for each individual package.

Now you don’t have to repeat the parameter because you can now use the new parameter (-package-description-file) instead.

Using the new parameter (-package-description-file) you can now specify a xml file that contains the description for all your packages.

The format of the file is as follows:

<overviews>
	<packages>
		<package name="package.name1">
			<shortDescription></shortDescription>
			<description></description>
		</package>
	</packages>
</overviews>

Here is a sample file (pkgDescription.xml)

<overviews>
	<packages>
		<package name="mx.core">
			<shortDescription>
			<![CDATA[
				The mx.core package contains the
				base classes and interfaces,
				such as UIComponent, used by Flex.
			]]>
			</shortDescription>
			<description>
			<![CDATA[
				The mx.core package contains the
				base classes and interfaces,
				such as UIComponent, used by Flex.
			]]>
			</description>
		</package>
		<package name="mx.controls">
			<shortDescription>
			<![CDATA[
				The mx.controls package contains
				the Flex user-interface controls.
			]]>
			</shortDescription>
			<description>
			<![CDATA[
				The mx.controls package contains
				the Flex user-interface controls.
			]]>
			</description>
		</package>
	</packages>
</overviews>

Here is how you can use it:

./asdoc -package-description-file=pkgDescription.xml
-doc-classes=mx.controls.Button
-source-path=<sdk root>/frameworks/projects/framework/src

This parameter is available in Flex SDK 4 only. And the nightly build of Flex SDK 4 can be found at http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Download+Flex+4 (choose a build after 4.0.0.8245 to use this parameter)

Here . . . → Read More: ASDoc for Flex SDK Builds]]> Do you work with the SDK nightly builds or the Flex SDK svn repository? If yes, then you have probably faced the situation where the flex public language reference is slightly older (compared to the nightly builds). If you are working with some new APIs then you obviously want to look at the latest asdoc.

Here is what you can do:
1. Go to the root folder of your local SDK (doesn’t matter if you are using a SDK zip or the public svn repository)
2. Run the command:
ant asdoc

This command will generate the asdoc for all projects that are part of the Flex SDK, and the documentation (in html format) will be created in a folder named “asdoc-output” inside the sdk root folder. It takes around 7-8 minutes, so have patience (it is going through a lot of source files in the SDK )

It is also a good option if you sometimes work offline or can’t access internet for some reason.

Couple of caveats:
1. It only works from the SDK root folder
2. Only available in builds for FLEX 4.
3. You will get the documentation only for projects that are in the FLEX SDK, so don’t freak out when you don’t see the documentation for Flash Player classes or charting classes etc.

You can grab the latest nightly builds from http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Download+Flex+4