Access javadoc programmatically

This tar ball (export-doclet-0.1.tar.gz) contains two maven project artifacts. It shows how to access the javadoc information of a project during the maven lifecycle phase ‘generate-sources’, traverse it, fill a Java object structure (export-doclet-api), marshal it to XML and include it into the jar of the artifact. Later on, you will be able to unmarshal the javadoc information. The export-doclet-api is oriented towards the doclet-api and the reflection-api and may therefore be familiar to you.

You can build the project like this:

export-doclet$ mvn clean install

Afterwards change to your project directory and add the following lines to your pom:

<!-- ... -->
<build>
	<!-- ... -->
	<plugins>
		<plugin>
			<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
			<artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>
			<version>2.7</version>
			<configuration>
				<doclet>de.jn.doclet.ExportDoclet</doclet>
				<docletArtifact>
					<groupId>de.jn.doclet</groupId>
					<artifactId>export-doclet</artifactId>
					<version>0.1</version>
				</docletArtifact>
				<additionalparam>-dest ${project.build.directory}/generated-resources/${project.groupId}_${project.artifactId}.xml</additionalparam>
				<useStandardDocletOptions>false</useStandardDocletOptions>
			</configuration>
			<executions>
				<execution>
					<phase>generate-sources</phase>
					<goals>
						<goal>javadoc</goal>
					</goals>
				</execution>
			</executions>
		</plugin>
	</plugins>
	<resources>
		<resource>
			<directory>target/generated-resources</directory>
		</resource>
		<resource>
			<directory>src/main/resources</directory>
		</resource>
	</resources>
</build>
<!-- ... -->

Last but not least, you should build your project artifact:

myproject$ mvn package

If the project builds successfully the target directory should contain a generated-resources directory containing an xml file named ${groupid}_${projectid}.xml. This file contains the marshalled javadoc information . It will be copied to the classpath root of the jar file of your artifact.