26
7
Say I have this constructor:
/// <summary>
/// Example comment.
/// </summary>
public SftpConnection(string host, string username,
string password, int port) {...}
which has these overloads:
public SftpConnection(string host, string username, string password)
: this(host, username, password, 22) { }
public SftpConnection(string host, string username, int port)
: this(host, username, "", port) { }
public SftpConnection(string host, string username)
: this(host, username, "", 22) { }
and in reality, the XML comment is pretty large, with
param, example and exception elements and so on.
Is there some way to add a special XML comment one-liner to the overloads, such that they use the exact same comments so that I don't need to copy-paste the whole, enormous original comments?
I'm thinking something like:
<use cref="SftpConnection(string,string,string,int)" /> which doesn't work of course.
I am aware of the
include element, but I get the impression it reads the comments from an XML file instead, which I don't want - I want the comment to still be visible in the code, but only once.
Thanks :-)
- 1This question is quite old - for newcommers googling "inheritdoc" should hopefully set you down a path where you'll find the answer you seek. (It depends on your options and requiements.) – AnorZaken Jun 18 '17 at 16:05
- @AnorZaken You should post your comment as an answer, it's actually very useful. – konrad.kruczynski Jul 12 '17 at 13:12
18
You can’t really do this. I find it annoying too.
However, you can alleviate the problem by using default parameter values instead of lots of overloads. Instead of:
public SftpConnection(string host, string username, string password, int port)
public SftpConnection(string host, string username, string password)
public SftpConnection(string host, string username, int port)
public SftpConnection(string host, string username)
You can have just a single one:
public SftpConnection(string host, string username, string password = "",
int port = 22)
This has multiple advantages:
- Need only one XML comment. The whole point of my answer. ☺
- Users of Visual Studio can instantly see that the default value for
portis 22. With the overloads, this is not obvious; you have to specifically mention it in the documentation. - You indirectly encourage client code to become more readable by encouraging the use of named parameters (e.g.
port: 2222instead of just2222, which is less clear).
And the greatest part about this is that using default values does not remove the ability to still have several overloads if you need them. Typical examples where you want overloads with default values might be something like...
ReadFrom(string filename, ReaderOptions options = null)
ReadFrom(Stream stream, ReaderOptions options = null)
ReadFrom(byte[] rawData, ReaderOptions options = null)
In these cases, I would argue the XML comments should actually be different.
- You're right about that. I have changed my code as you suggested. Nevertheless, this is going to bug me now in the future! And there must be other situations where this functionality is needed. – Nobody Sep 8 '10 at 13:11
- Definitely. Like I said, I find it annoying too. Default values only alleviate the problem, not solve it... – TimwiSep 8 '10 at 13:14
- @Tergiver: Of course. I don’t normally consider it necessary to say because it’s not that common that people have to use something obsolete. – Timwi Sep 8 '10 at 15:34
- 2@JoshuaGruber: I think the only relevant guideline in the article is the last one, where they're warning you the technique above is not CLS-compliant. So I would say it's fine if you stick to VB.NET / C#, but less so if you need to expose your functions to other languages. – rkagerer Jan 12 '13 at 18:03
4
A half-solution is the
<overloads></overloads> tag. While it doesn't solve the issue with <summary/>, it does provide documentation that shows up anywhere all the overloads are listed as a group, including both IntelliSense and SandCastle.
1
Is this what you want?
/// <seealso cref="SftpConnection(string,string,string,int)"</seealso>
- OK, I can't seem to get
seealsoto do anything. Long shot but is it perhaps something to do with the version of c# or .net? – Nobody Sep 8 '10 at 12:53 - I think its meant for creating rich HTML documentations using doxygen and other documentation tools... ill look into what it does, though...what version of VS are you using (or are you using Mono)? – Richard J. Ross IIISep 8 '10 at 13:09
- VS 2010 - I think you have to use the fully-qualified names though so your example might not work. – Nobody Sep 8 '10 at 13:14
- 1After looking at visual studio's documentation and trying several workarounds, I have decided that the
<seealso></seealso>is fo
