[AVRO-886] Support doc strings in IDL for protocols and message interfaces

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 1.6.0
• Fix Version/s: 1.6.0
• Component/s: java
• Hadoop Flags: Reviewed
• Release Note: IDL parsing updated to support capturing doc strings for both Protocol and Message entities.
• Tags: IDL, Code generation
• Assignee: George Fletcher
• Reporter: George Fletcher
• Created: 08/Sep/11 17:07
• Updated: 13/Dec/11 19:06
• Resolved: 20/Sep/11 17:56

Description

I would like to be able to add documentation to the IDL that will get parsed with more types than Enum, Fixed and Record. Specifically, I'd like to support doc strings for protocols and message interfaces. One purpose is to be able to write the documentation into the generated code.

The specific use case is to use information in the documentation strings to auto generate java annotations in the generated Java code. This is done with our own specifics compiler.

Here is an example 'marked up' IDL file...

/** class=@AccessControl(group="normal") */
@namespace("com.aol.interfaces.echo")
protocol EchoService {

import idl "Errors.avdl";

/** Message structure for the echo service */
record Message

{ /** the string to be echo'd */ string echome; map<string> echoes; }

/** method=@AccessControl(source="MyService") */
string echoString(string msg) throws com.aol.interfaces.error.ServiceError;
Message echoMessage(Message msg) throws com.aol.interfaces.error.ServiceError;

void publishMessage(string msg) oneway;
}