How can one use variables in JAVADOC comments?

Question

I wish to refer to a particular URL in JAVADOC comments in a project. However, I know that the URL may change in the near future. So, I was looking for a functionality that allows one to use a single variable in place of this URL throughout the project. So that if needed, it can easily be changed, but I could not find one.

Is there a way to achieve this?

Answer 1

By looking into javadoc specification doc I see this tag : {@value}

Displays the value of a constant, which must be a static field.

So if you create a class for example DocLinksHolder and declare static fields there, then you can refer to them in javadoc.

{@value DocLinksHolder#fieldName}

Answer 2

If you are using maven, you can use its filtering feature.

With this in your pom :

<resources>
  <resource>
    <directory>src/main/java</directory>
    <filtering>true</filtering>
  </resource>
</resources>

Maven will find all string which match ${something} and replace them with values coming from your pom.

For example, you can put

/**
 * URL is ${url}.
 */

and in your pom :

<properties>
  <url>myUrl.com</url>
</properties>