Build Documentation from your Tests

A couple months ago I decided to toy around with some code ideas in my head. I had two goals:

1. To be able to parse some plain English and make DateTime and Timespans objects.
2. To try out Parsley (because I have a not-so-secret urge to write a language)

After a quick spike a while back I had something I named TempusReader, working code which I posted on Github. I don’t think something like Parsley was absolutely necessary for me to do what I wanted, but most importantly, I was able to acheive both of my goals.

While working on this code, I wanted to provide documentation on how to use it. In my experience, looking at tests is one good way to understand how something works. The odds of somebody looking in a test file are slim, but looking at the readme file are almost necessary when visiting a page on github.

I could just output some text to my readme files directly from my tests, right? This was actually a fun little task and potentially quite helpful. I’d like to explore this area more in the future, maybe a simple file to pull from Nuget, configure, then be off to the races. It’s pretty raw as it sits, but I thought I’d share the idea.

Here is the file that’s doing the work:

https://github.com/ChrisMissal/TempusReader/blob/master/src/Tests/DocumentationBuilder.cs