How do I exclude a protected method from javadoc?

Question

I need to document some but not all protected methods.

Thanks

Oh my god so there was such a tag. Why do then all documentation and tutorials on internet say there is no such tag and you have to write complex stuff to make another solution for this. — user2381422, Jul 16 '13 at 13:29
As to why there is no hide switch in javadoc... A protected method of a documented class is considered part of the API. If it shouldn't be documented, it probably shouldn't be accessible, so it doesn't belong exposed like that. — Konstantin Komissarchik, Jul 16 '13 at 22:56
This question is closely related to my question: [is-there-a-way-to-produce-javadoc-for-a-subset-of-public-methods](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15812349/is-there-a-way-to-produce-javadoc-for-a-subset-of-public-methods). — Frans Lundberg, Aug 09 '13 at 07:29

Kevin Welker · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-16T17:52:47.557

0

You can exclude all protected methods with the command line option "-protected", but I just re-read your question more closely and realize this is probably not what you are looking for.

edited Jul 16 '13 at 17:52

answered Jul 16 '13 at 15:34

Kevin Welker

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 07 '13 at 13:13

You can't do this with straight Javadoc but, depending on what other javadoc facilities you need, and how it is you are generating your javadoc, you could consider switching to Doclava. Doclava is a doclet (think: plug-in) for javadoc and it does recognise the @hide tag.

The HTML output is much prettier too.

Unfortunately it doesn't recognise large swathes of javadoc command line options, so it may not be suitable.

https://code.google.com/p/doclava/

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 09 '16 at 12:51

If you are using the maven plugin, you can use the show tag into the configuration tag with value public as shown below. In that case, only public members of classes will be displayed into javadoc.

        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.10.1</version>
            <configuration>
                <show>public</show>
                <doctitle>My company API</doctitle>
                <subpackages>my.company.package.api</subpackages>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>

How do I exclude a protected method from javadoc?

3 Answers3