Ethereum-Natural-Specification-Format.md

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Ethereum Natural Specification Format

Solidity contracts can have a special form of comments that form the basis of the Ethereum Natural Specification Format. For a usage example please check here.

Documentation Example

Documentation is inserted above the function following the doxygen notation of either one or multiple lines starting with /// or a multiline comment starting with /** and ending with */.

As an example consider the documentation of the following function:

  /// @notice Send `(valueInmGAV / 1000).fixed(0,3)` GAV from the account of 
  /// `message.caller.address()`, to an account accessible only by `to.address()
  /// @dev This should be the documentation of the function for the developer docs
  /// @param to The address of the recipient of the GavCoin
  /// @param valueInmGav The GavCoin value to send
  function send(address to, uint256 valueInmGAV) {
    if (balances[message.caller] >= valueInmGAV) {
      balances[to] += valueInmGAV;
      balances[message.caller] -= valueInmGAV;
    }

There are a few things to note about the above example.

• Natspec format uses doxygen tags with some special meaning. These are:

  • @title: This is a title that should describe the contract and go above the contract definition
  • @author: The name of the author of the contract. Should also go above the contract definition.
  • @notice: Represents user documentation. This is the text that will appear to the user to notify him of what the function he is about to execute is doing
  • @dev: Represents developer documentation. This is documentation that would only be visible to the developer.
  • @param: Documents a parameter just like in doxygen. Has to be followed by the parameter name.
  • @return: Documents the return type of a contract's function.

• If any of the above are missing they are simply considered as blank and it's not illegal to omit any of them

• (valueInmGAV / 1000).fixed(0,3) A dynamic expression. This should be a valid Javascript/Paperscript expression, which when evaluated in an EVM Javascript environment initialised with various system values (such as parameters).

Documentation Output

When parsed, documentation such as the one from the above example will produce 2 different json files. One is meant to be consumed by the user as a notice when a function is executed and the other to be used by the developer.

Let us see a more full contract example.

/// @title This is the contract title.
/// @author Homer Simpson
contract GavCoin
{
  /// @notice Send `(valueInmGAV / 1000).fixed(0,3)` GAV from the account of 
  /// `message.caller.address()`, to an account accessible only by `to.address()
  /// @dev This should be the documentation of the function for the developer docs
  /// @param to The address of the recipient of the GavCoin
  /// @param valueInmGav The GavCoin value to send
  function send(address to, uint256 valueInmGAV) {
    if (balances[message.caller] >= valueInmGAV) {
      balances[to] += valueInmGAV;
      balances[message.caller] -= valueInmGAV;
    }
  }

  /// @notice `(balanceInmGAV / 1000).fixed(0,3)` GAV is the total funds available to `who.address()`.
  /// @param who The address of the person whose balance we check
  /// @return The balance of the user provided as argument
  function balance(address who) constant returns (uint256 balanceInmGAV) {
    balanceInmGAV = balances[who];
  }

invariants:
  /// @notice The sum total amount of GAV in the system is 1 million.
  /// @dev This is the invariant development documentation
  reduce(0, add, map(valueOf, balances)) == 100000000000;

construction:
  /// @notice Endows `message.caller.address()` with 1m GAV.
  balances[message.caller] = 100000000000;

state:
  mapping balances(address) returns uint256 with function(address a) returns uint256 { return a; };
};

User Documentation

The above documentation will produce the following user documentation json file as output:

{
  "source": "...",
  "language": "Solidity",
  "languageVersion": 1,
  "methods": {
    "send(address,uint256)": { "notice": "Send `(valueInmGAV / 1000).fixed(0,3)` GAV from the account of `message.caller.address()`, to an account accessible only by `to.address()`." },
    "balance(address)": { "notice": "`(balanceInmGAV / 1000).fixed(0,3)` GAV is the total funds available to `who.address()`." }
  },
  "invariants": [
    { "notice": "The sum total amount of GAV in the system is 1 million." }
  ],
  "construction": [
    { "notice": "Endows `message.caller.address()` with 1m GAV." }
  ]
}

Note that the key by which to find the methods is the function's canonical signature as defined in the Contract ABI and not simply the function's name.

Developer Documentation

Apart from the user documentation file, a developer documentation json file should also be produced and should look like this:

{
  "author": "Homer Simpson",
  "title": "This is the contract title.",
  "methods": {
    "send(uint256)": {
      "details": "This should be the documentation of the function for the developer docs"
    },
    "balance": {
      "details": ""
    }
  },
  "invariants": [
     { "details": "This is the invariant development documentation"}
  ],
  "construction": {
     "details": ""
  }
}

Example usage

There is a detailed example of using the Natspec feature with the cpp client here.