XML Commands

Doxygen supports most of the XML commands that are typically used in C# code comments. The XML tags are defined in Appendix D of the ECMA-334 standard, which defines the C# language. Unfortunately, the specification is not very precise and a number of the examples given are of poor quality.

Here is the list of tags supported by doxygen:

• <c> Identifies inline text that should be rendered as a piece of code. Similar to using <tt>text</tt>.
• <code> Set one or more lines of source code or program output. Note that this command behaves like \code ... \endcode for C# code, but it behaves like the HTML equivalent <code>...</code> for other languages.
• <description> Part of a <list> command, describes an item.
• <example> Marks a block of text as an example, ignored by doxygen.
• <exception cref="member"> Identifies the exception a method can throw.
• <include> Can be used to import a piece of XML from an external file. Ignored by doxygen at the moment.
• <inheritdoc> Can be used to insert the documentation of a member of a base class into the documentation of a member of a derived class that reimplements it.
• <item> List item. Can only be used inside a <list> context.
• <list type="type"> Starts a list, supported types are bullet or number and table. A list consists of a number of <item> tags. A list of type table, is a two column table which can have a header.
• <listheader> Starts the header of a list of type "table".
• <para> Identifies a paragraph of text.
• <param name="paramName"> Marks a piece of text as the documentation for parameter "paramName". Similar to using \param.
• <paramref name="paramName"> Refers to a parameter with name "paramName". Similar to using \a.
• <permission> Identifies the security accessibility of a member. Ignored by doxygen.
• <remarks> Identifies the detailed description.
• <returns> Marks a piece of text as the return value of a function or method. Similar to using \return.
• <see cref="member"> Refers to a member. Similar to \ref.
• <seealso cref="member"> Starts a "See also" section referring to "member". Similar to using \sa member.
• <summary> Identifies the brief description. Similar to using \brief.
• <term> Part of a <list> command.
• <typeparam name="paramName"> Marks a piece of text as the documentation for type parameter "paramName". Similar to using \param.
• <typeparamref name="paramName"> Refers to a parameter with name "paramName". Similar to using \a.
• <value> Identifies a property. Ignored by doxygen.
• <![CDATA[...]]> The text inside this tag (on the ...) is handled as normal doxygen comment except for the XML special characters <, > and & that are used as if they were escaped.

Here is an example of a typical piece of code using some of the above commands:

/// <summary>
/// A search engine.
/// </summary>
class Engine
{
  /// <summary>
  /// The Search method takes a series of parameters to specify the search criterion
  /// and returns a dataset containing the result set.
  /// </summary>
  /// <param name="connectionString">the connection string to connect to the
  /// database holding the content to search</param>
  /// <param name="maxRows">The maximum number of rows to
  /// return in the result set</param>
  /// <param name="searchString">The text that we are searching for</param>
  /// <returns>A DataSet instance containing the matching rows. It contains a maximum
  /// number of rows specified by the maxRows parameter</returns>
  public DataSet Search(string connectionString, int maxRows, int searchString)
  {
    DataSet ds = new DataSet();
    return ds;
  }
}

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