Documenting Extensions

Using the same tools used to generate the documentation for the NWB core format. one can easily generate documentation in HTML, PDF, ePub and many other formats for extensions.

If you used ndx-template, then your repository is already pre-configured to automatically generate documentation for your extension using the HDMF DocUtils and Sphinx. The docs directory structure should look like this.

ndx-my-extension/
    docs/
        source/
            credits.rst
            description.rst
            release_notes.rst
            ...

To generate the HTML documentation files from the YAML (or JSON) sources of the extension, simply run:

cd docs/source
make html

The generated documentation will be available in build/html. To view, open build/html/index.html in your browser. These pages contain diagrams of your extension. Note that there are several places where information needs to be added. For instance, the Overview section says:

Note

Add the description of your extension here

Within docs/source, edit credits.rst, description.rst, and release_notes.rst, then rerun make html.

Now that you have created documentation for your extension, it is time to learn how to publish in the NDX catalog.

See published extensions and learn how to share your extension on the NDX Catalog website.