A lightweight and efficient tool for parsing and managing C# XML documentation comments.

BitzArt.XDoc

BitzArt.XDoc is a lightweight .NET library for parsing and accessing XML documentation comments from your C# code. It provides an intuitive API to retrieve documentation for:

• Types/classes
• Properties
• Methods
• Fields

using BitzArt.XDoc;
...

var xdoc = new XDoc();

var typeDocs = xdoc.Get(typeof(MyType));
var propertyDocs = xDoc.Get(typeof(MyType).GetProperty(nameof(MyType.PropertyOne)));

BitzArt.XDoc.PlainText

BitzArt.XDoc.PlainText is an extension package for BitzArt.XDoc that enables rendering XML documentation comments into plain text.

using BitzArt.XDoc;
using Xdoc.Renderer.PlaintText;

...
    
var xdoc = new XDoc();

var typeDescrption = xDoc.Get(typeof(MyType)).ToPlainText();
var propertyDescrption = xDoc.Get(typeof(MyType).GetProperty(nameof(MyType.PropertyOne))).ToPlainText();

BitzArt.XDoc.EntityFrameworkCore

BitzArt.XDoc.EntityFrameworkCore is an extension library that bridges XML documentation comments from C# code to Entity Framework Core database objects.

Example 1: Configure comments for all entities in your DbContext

using BitzArt.XDoc;

public class MyDbContext : DbContext 
{
    protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
    {
        base.OnModelCreating(modelBuilder);
        
        // Configure comments for all entities
        modelBuilder.ConfigureComments(new XDoc());
    }
}

Example 2: Configure comments for specific properties using Fluent API

using BitzArt.XDoc;

...

protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
{
    modelBuilder.Entity<Customer>()
        .Property(c => c.Name)
        .HasComment<string, Customer>(c => c.Name);
}

Recommendations

Each XDoc instance maintains its own cache of parsed documentation in a ConcurrentDictionary<Assembly, AssemblyDocumentation>. Using multiple instances unnecessarily duplicates this data in memory

If your application provides documentation-related services (like API documentation generation), maintaining a single pre-loaded XDoc instance can significantly improve response times.

Possible approaches

Dependency Injection (Recommended)

Register XDoc as a singleton in your application's dependency injection container.

Factory

Create a factory that provides access to a shared XDoc instance:

By following these recommendations, you can ensure that XML documentation is parsed only once per assembly, maximizing performance and minimizing resource usage in your application.