Installation

Requirements

TypeDoc requires Node.js to be installed on your system. If you haven't done that already, head over to their site and follow their install instructions.

Installing TypeDoc is available as a node package. Using npm ensures that all relevant dependencies are setup correctly. You can choose to either install locally to your project or globally to the CLI.

Local installation (preferred)

If you want to use TypeDoc from your command line in a project, use the API in your project code, or TypeDoc in an npm script, a local installation is the recommended approach. First install TypeDoc locally in your project:

$ npm install typedoc --save-dev

By saving TypeDoc to the project package.json file with the previous command, anyone who runs npm install on the project will have typedoc installed at the specific version required for the project.

The name of TypeDoc's executable is typedoc. To verify that it works, you can now invoke the CLI in your project using npx (npx is a tool bundled with npm), passing TypeDoc the --version argument:

$ npx typedoc --version

TypeDoc 0.20.0
Using TypeScript 4.1.2 from /home/gerrit/typedoc/node_modules/typescript/lib

Command line interface

The CLI can be used both from your terminal or from npm scripts. All arguments that are not passed with flags are parsed as entry points. Use either the --out or --json arguments to define the format and destination of your documentation.

typedoc --out docs src/index.ts

JSON Configuration

Instead of passing all arguments via the command line, the CLI also supports reading TypeDoc configuration from json files.

typedoc.json

When running typedoc from the CLI, you can define any option except the entry files in a json file named typedoc.json.

{
  "entryPoints": ["src/index.ts"],
  "out": "docs"
}

tsconfig.json

TypeDoc options can be defined withing an existing tsconfig.json file. Use a typedocOptions section to define options as a json model.

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "normalTypeScriptOptions": "here"
  },
  "typedocOptions": {
    "entryPoints": ["src/index.ts"],
    "out": "docs"
  }
}

Node module

If you would like dynamic configuration or would like to run typedoc without using the CLI, import the node module and build the documentation yourself.

const TypeDoc = require("typedoc");

async function main() {
  const app = new TypeDoc.Application();

  // If you want TypeDoc to load tsconfig.json / typedoc.json files
  app.options.addReader(new TypeDoc.TSConfigReader());
  app.options.addReader(new TypeDoc.TypeDocReader());

  app.bootstrap({
    // typedoc options here
    entryPoints: ["src/index.ts"],
  });

  const project = app.convert();

  if (project) {
    // Project may not have converted correctly
    const outputDir = "docs";

    // Rendered docs
    await app.generateDocs(project, outputDir);
    // Alternatively generate JSON output
    await app.generateJson(project, outputDir + "/documentation.json");
  }
}

main().catch(console.error);

Third-Party Tools

Some great folks out there have created plugins so you can run TypeDoc with your favorite task runner. Plugins are available for Grunt, Gulp, and Webpack. All of them can be installed using npm.

Grunt

Name

grunt-typedoc

Website

https://www.npmjs.org/package/grunt-typedoc/

Author

Bart van der Schoor

You can install the plugin with the following command:

$ npm install --save-dev grunt-typedoc

Update the following snippet with your configuration and add it to your gruntfile.js file:

grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-typedoc");
grunt.initConfig({
  typedoc: {
    build: {
      options: {
        out: "docs/",
        name: "My project title",
      },
      src: "src/**/*",
    },
  },
});

Gulp

Name

gulp-typedoc

Website

https://www.npmjs.org/package/gulp-typedoc/

Author

Rogier Schouten

You can install the plugin with the following command:

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-typedoc

Update the following snippet with your configuration and add it to your gulpfile.js file:

var typedoc = require("gulp-typedoc");
gulp.task("typedoc", function () {
  return gulp.src(["src/**/*.ts"]).pipe(
    typedoc({
      out: "docs/",
      name: "My project title",
    })
  );
});

Webpack

Name

typedoc-webpack-plugin

Website

https://www.npmjs.com/package/typedoc-webpack-plugin

Author

Tim Sawyer

You can install the plugin with the following command:

$ npm install typedoc-webpack-plugin --save-dev

Update the following snippet with your configuration and add it to your Webpack config file:

var TypedocWebpackPlugin = require("typedoc-webpack-plugin");

// add to webpack plugins
plugins: [
  new TypedocWebpackPlugin({
    theme: "./typedoc-theme/",
  }),
];