How to document the objects created by a factory function using ngdoc in angular?

Question

How do I use ngdoc to document an 'angular factory' that returns a 'factory function'? Specifically, how do I document the objects my 'factory function' creates?

In the contrived example below I've documented how to use the factory to create a page object, but how do I document how to use the page objects themselves?

angular.module('fooRestClient').factory('page', function () {

   var prototype = {};

  // Below I need to somehow link the methods a page object has to the
  // factory's documentation.

  /**
   * @description Fetches the page at the specified index.
   *
   * @param {number} index - the index of the page to fetch
   *
   * @returns {object} a page object representing the page at the given index
   */
   prototype.getPage = function (index) {
      // returns a new page.
   };

   // ... more useful methods.

   /**
    * @ngdoc service
    * @type function
    * @name fooRestClient:page
    * @description
    * A factory function for producing page objects....  
    *
    * @param {Number} index - The page index.
    * @param {Number} size - The page size.
    * @param {Number} total - The total number of pages.
    * @param {Array}  data - The contents of the page.
    * @returns {object} A page object for the given resource
    */
    return function page(index, size, total, data) {
        return Object.create(prototype, {
            index: index,
            size: size,
            total: total,
            data: data
        });
    };

});

The closest match I can find on SO is: How to document a factory that returns a class in angular with ngdoc?. This doesn't help because I don't have a "class" name to link the methods back to as I'm not using pseudo-classical inheritance.

Answer 1

Maybe this works as you expect:

    /**
     * @ngdoc service
     * @type function
     * @name fooRestClient:page
     * @description
     * A factory function for producing page objects....
     *
     * @param {Number} index - The page index.
     * @param {Number} size - The page size.
     * @param {Number} total - The total number of pages.
     * @param {Array}  data - The contents of the page.
     * @returns {object} A {@link prototypeInstance|page object} for the given resource
     */

    return function page(index, size, total, data) {
      /**
       * @ngdoc object
       * @name prototypeInstance
       * @description page object for the given resource
       */
      return Object.create(prototype, {
        /*
         * @ngdoc object
         * @name prototypeInstance#index
         * @description index description
         */
        index: index,
        /*
         * @ngdoc object
         * @name prototypeInstance#size
         * @description size description
         */
        size: size,
        /*
         * @ngdoc object
         * @name prototypeInstance#total
         * @description total description
         */
        total: total,
        /*
         * @ngdoc object
         * @name prototypeInstance#data
         * @description data description
         */
        data: data
      });
    };

I know its a bit verbose, but it's the only way I found to do this kind of things