Various documentation improvements.

Change-Id: Iacea45ae0f602f49e46de472286a7a77ee20c301
This commit is contained in:
Wouter van Oortmerssen
2014-10-24 11:15:37 -07:00
parent d426890b92
commit ea592296b8
6 changed files with 28 additions and 11 deletions

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@@ -112,7 +112,7 @@ root_type Monster;
<h3>Namespaces</h3>
<p>These will generate the corresponding namespace in C++ for all helper code, and packages in Java. You can use <code>.</code> to specify nested namespaces / packages.</p>
<h3>Includes</h3>
<p>You can include other schemas files in your current one, e.g.: </p><pre class="fragment">include "mydefinitions.fbs"
<p>You can include other schemas files in your current one, e.g.: </p><pre class="fragment">include "mydefinitions.fbs";
</pre><p>This makes it easier to refer to types defined elsewhere. <code>include</code> automatically ensures each file is parsed just once, even when referred to more than once.</p>
<p>When using the <code>flatc</code> compiler to generate code for schema definitions, only definitions in the current file will be generated, not those from the included files (those you still generate separately).</p>
<h3>Root type</h3>
@@ -128,7 +128,7 @@ root_type Monster;
</pre><h3>Comments &amp; documentation</h3>
<p>May be written as in most C-based languages. Additionally, a triple comment (<code>///</code>) on a line by itself signals that a comment is documentation for whatever is declared on the line after it (table/struct/field/enum/union/element), and the comment is output in the corresponding C++ code. Multiple such lines per item are allowed.</p>
<h3>Attributes</h3>
<p>Attributes may be attached to a declaration, behind a field, or after the name of a table/struct/enum/union. These may either have a value or not. Some attributes like <code>deprecated</code> are understood by the compiler, others are simply ignored (like <code>priority</code>), but are available to query if you parse the schema at runtime. This is useful if you write your own code generators/editors etc., and you wish to add additional information specific to your tool (such as a help text).</p>
<p>Attributes may be attached to a declaration, behind a field, or after the name of a table/struct/enum/union. These may either have a value or not. Some attributes like <code>deprecated</code> are understood by the compiler, others are simply ignored (like <code>priority</code> in the example above), but are available to query if you parse the schema at runtime. This is useful if you write your own code generators/editors etc., and you wish to add additional information specific to your tool (such as a help text).</p>
<p>Current understood attributes:</p>
<ul>
<li><code>id: n</code> (on a table field): manually set the field identifier to <code>n</code>. If you use this attribute, you must use it on ALL fields of this table, and the numbers must be a contiguous range from 0 onwards. Additionally, since a union type effectively adds two fields, its id must be that of the second field (the first field is the type field and not explicitly declared in the schema). For example, if the last field before the union field had id 6, the union field should have id 8, and the unions type field will implicitly be 7. IDs allow the fields to be placed in any order in the schema. When a new field is added to the schema is must use the next available ID.</li>
@@ -137,6 +137,7 @@ root_type Monster;
<li><code>original_order</code> (on a table): since elements in a table do not need to be stored in any particular order, they are often optimized for space by sorting them to size. This attribute stops that from happening.</li>
<li><code>force_align: size</code> (on a struct): force the alignment of this struct to be something higher than what it is naturally aligned to. Causes these structs to be aligned to that amount inside a buffer, IF that buffer is allocated with that alignment (which is not necessarily the case for buffers accessed directly inside a <code>FlatBufferBuilder</code>).</li>
<li><code>bit_flags</code> (on an enum): the values of this field indicate bits, meaning that any value N specified in the schema will end up representing 1&lt;&lt;N, or if you don't specify values at all, you'll get the sequence 1, 2, 4, 8, ...</li>
<li><code>nested_flatbuffer: table_name</code> (on a field): this indicates that the field (which must be a vector of ubyte) contains flatbuffer data, for which the root type is given by <code>table_name</code>. The generated code will then produce a convenient accessor for the nested FlatBuffer.</li>
</ul>
<h2>JSON Parsing</h2>
<p>The same parser that parses the schema declarations above is also able to parse JSON objects that conform to this schema. So, unlike other JSON parsers, this parser is strongly typed, and parses directly into a FlatBuffer (see the compiler documentation on how to do this from the command line, or the C++ documentation on how to do this at runtime).</p>