<title>Reading Documentation</title>

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<h1>Reading Documentation</h1>

<a href='/'>This is documentation for reading JavaScript documentation

generated by documentation.js</a>

How do you read API documentation?

Compared to answers, examples, or narrative documentation, API documentation

can be an intimidating read: it's much more like an Encylopedia than a novel.

<h4>Understanding the types of things</h4>

API documentation will have a few explicit classes of things that are documented.

Here are some distinctions that aren't always laid out in other kinds

of documentation:

<li><strong>instance</strong> methods will usually be denoted with the #

symbol in API documentation. These are methods that you <em>call on an instance of an object</em>.

For instance, in native JavaScript, strings have a <em>.toUpperCase()</em>

method. You don't call this method on the String type, but you call it

on a specific string: like you can write

<code>var yelling = 'hi'.toUpperCase()</code>

Remember that, though documentation uses the # character to show what's an

instance method, you don't actually use that symbol in your source code.

</li>

<li><strong>static</strong> methods instead are called on objects or classes

without needing to instantiate anything. Usually in documentation, static

methods are denoated with a '.' The <code>fromCharCode</code>

method of strings is an example of this: it'll be documented as a static

method and called like <code>String.fromCharCode(20)</code>. Notice

that we're not calling this on a specific string, but the String

class itself.

</li>