JavaDoc

Links

How to Write Doc Comments for the Javadoc Tool
How to JavaDoc (efficient and maintainable) - 6 steps
JavaDoc doclet for API visualization. It generates comprehensive UML-like class and package diagrams for quick understanding of the overall API structure.

Code

Note: Since Java 5 you can use {@code} instead of the actual HTML code tags - helps cut back on clutter.

{@code fileName}

* @return          <code>true</code> if the image is completely
*                  loaded and was painted successfully;
*                  <code>false</code> otherwise.

Inherit

If you use the inheritDoc tag when a class is inheriting an interface the javadocs are also inherited (also keeps CheckStyle happy):

/**
 * {@inheritDoc}
 */

Line break

<p> and <br>:

/**
 * Simple function to create a repository.
 * <p>
 * - The repository must be created using this function...<br>
 * This text will start on a new line...

Link

A Tip for Writing Better Javadoc

/** Calling this method will return a {@link String} with the user's name */
/** Used to get the cached result of {@link AbstractDocument.Content#createPosition(int) } */

The beauty of this tag is that depending on how you have your API-linking setup during the Javadoc generation stage the behavior of @link seems to be as follows:

If the class referenced is accessible given the current scope of linked Javadoc, make the class a hyperlink over to that classes’s Javadoc page.
If the class referenced is not accessible, simply wrap it with code tags to make it stand out in the doc as a code artifact.

To set a label for the link:

{@link AbstractDocument.Content#createPosition(int) MyLabel}

List

* <ul>
* <li>The Component to draw on
* <li>The current clip
* <li>The current color
* </ul>

Note: For a numbered list, use the <ol> tag (rather than <ul>).

see

Note: Almost always better to use the link tag (see above).

@see reference.

@see package.class#member label:

* @see com.mycompany.lucene.IndexUpdate#acceptExtension

URL:

* @see <a href="spec.html#section">Java Spec</a>