dart-doc-validation

--- name: dart-doc-validation description: |- Best practices for validating Dart documentation comments. Covers using `dart doc` to catch unresolved references and macros. license: Apache-2.0 key_features: - Documentation comment validation - Unresolved reference checking - Dart doc macro verification ---

# Dart Doc Validation

## 1. When to use this skill

Use this skill when: - Writing or updating documentation comments (`///`) in Dart code. - Checking for broken documentation links, references, or macros. - Preparing a package for publishing to pub.dev.

## Discovery

To find documentation issues:

### Missing Lint Verify if the `comment_references` lint is enabled: - **Target**: `analysis_options.yaml` - **Search Query**: `comment_references`

### Automated Validation Run the documentation generator to surface warnings: - **Command**: `dart doc -o $(mktemp -d)` - **Keywords to look for**: `warning:`, `unresolved doc reference`, `undefined macro`

## 2. Best Practices

### Enable the doc validation lint

In your `analysis_options.yaml`, enable the `comment_references` lint.

```yaml linter: rules: - comment_references ```

### Validating Documentation Locally

Use the `dart doc` command with a temporary output directory to validate documentation comments without polluting the local project workspace.

This command parses all documentation comments and reports warnings such as: - `warning: unresolved doc reference` - `warning: undefined macro`

**Command to run:**

```bash dart doc -o $(mktemp -d) ```

*This will work on Mac and Linux.*

This ensures that the generated HTML files are stored in a temporary location and don't clutter the package directory, while still surfacing all validation warnings in the terminal output.

**Browsing the docs:**

Our docs use features designed to be run on a web server. If you want to browse the generated docs locally, install the `dhttpd` package.

```shell pub global activate dhttpd TMP_DIR=$(mktemp -d) && dart doc -o "$TMP_DIR" && dhttpd --path "$TMP_DIR" ```

*(Or use another HTTP server, such as `python3 -m http.server`.)*

### Fixing Common Warnings

- **Unresolved doc reference**: Ensure that any identifier wrapped in square brackets (`[Identifier]`) correctly points to an existing class, method, property, or parameter in the current scope or imported libraries. - **Undefined macro**: If using `{@macro macro_name}`, ensure that the template `{@template macro_name}` is defined in the same file or a file that is imported and visible to the documentation generator.