I recently got the opportunity to work on an idea that I've had for a few weeks – some kind of automized technical documentation of Drupal sites. It resulted in a rudimentary but working module Documentation Robot, collecting some technical information about the site where it is installed and summarizing it on a page.
It currently collects information about node types (including CCK fields), installed modules/projects, and user roles. In the pipe is also support for documenting views, panels, better CCK field documentation, and a tonne of other ideas I got. I also want to make the collected information re-usable in a number of different formats (for example DITA or creation of book nodes), but that is further off in the future.
Now, I know that this group is about documentation at drupal.org – so I'm sorry for posting off-topic. But I know there are lots of skilled and knowing documenters here, and I would like to ask for feedback before spending many more hours on this project (and hopefully making it a project at drupal.org).
- Have you seen similar projects before, that could use some help instead of me running off with a separate project?
- Would you find this kind of automated documentation useful?
If you have any other ideas or comments I am of course happy.
Below is a screenshot of the Documentation Robot installed on a site I was using for a completely other purpose. The page was made without any extra configuration – it just reads off the settings on the site.
Cheers,
//Johan Falk, NodeOne, Sweden
PS: If you're interested in more details, check out the module's README or just pop me an e-mail.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| docrobot-example.png | 136.86 KB |
| docrobot.tar_.gz_.txt | 3.33 KB |
Comments
there is something familiar...
I have used the module Site Documentation to get specific information before. Perhaps they can be merged, are they even similar?
They seem similar although
They seem similar although Nancy's module seems to be pretty dead at the moment, and I think Johan is looking for something a little more extensible and readable.
There are also
There are also http://drupal.org/project/journal and http://drupal.org/project/blame (which might be merged, http://drupal.org/node/978994 )
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Check out Fingerprint
Check out Fingerprint http://drupal.org/project/fingerprint
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echo
Needs to be open api for Drupal site profiling and reporting, no?
Essentially, I echo hejrocker above: "more extensible and readable"
Please help us be more concise about the scope and audience for these tools.
Thank you all.
Jeremy Donson
Database and Systems Engineer
New York City
Wow!
Thanks for all the replies and comments!
The Site Documentation module seems similar to what I had in mind, so I will definately check out how that one is structured and see if the projects can merge.
@kvantomme: I have been thinking about Fingerprint, but after a fair amount of consideration I believe that this project shouldn't use Features (since it should be able to capture a lot of things not sensible to export with Features). I'm completely up for a discussion, if you think otherwise!
Also very nice to see that the Journal module has gotten a cousine in the Blame project, and that there is already discussions to merge them.
The comments are much appreciated!
//Johan Falk, NodeOne, Sweden
Want to learn more Rules? Check out my latest screen cast series!
Huh, interesting... I'm
Huh, interesting... I'm almost wondering if this might be useful to harness for something like the core help pages? We did a lot of reworking of those last winter so they have an actual consistent format, but updating all of the permissions info each time in them (for example) will be a bit of a pain...would be cool if some of that could be exported straight from content types, etc.
Keep us posted, this is definitely an appropriate place to post about this (and I think a good interested audience, especially since everyone is starting to study up on various technical solutions that we'll probably be evaluating early next year). :)