sphinx.ext.autodoc – Include documentation from docstrings

This extension can import the modules you are documenting, and pull in documentation from docstrings in a semi-automatic way.

Note

For Sphinx (actually, the Python interpreter that executes Sphinx) to find your module, it must be importable. That means that the module or the package must be in one of the directories on sys.path – adapt your sys.path in the configuration file accordingly.

For this to work, the docstrings must of course be written in correct reStructuredText. You can then use all of the usual Sphinx markup in the docstrings, and it will end up correctly in the documentation. Together with hand-written documentation, this technique eases the pain of having to maintain two locations for documentation, while at the same time avoiding auto-generated-looking pure API documentation.

autodoc provides several directives that are versions of the usual py:module, py:class and so forth. On parsing time, they import the corresponding module and extract the docstring of the given objects, inserting them into the page source under a suitable py:module, py:class etc. directive.

Note

Just as py:class respects the current py:module, autoclass will also do so. Likewise, automethod will respect the current py:class.

.. automodule::
.. autoclass::
.. autoexception::

Document a module, class or exception. All three directives will by default only insert the docstring of the object itself:

.. autoclass:: Noodle

will produce source like this:

.. class:: Noodle

   Noodle's docstring.

The “auto” directives can also contain content of their own, it will be inserted into the resulting non-auto directive source after the docstring (but before any automatic member documentation).

Therefore, you can also mix automatic and non-automatic member documentation, like so:

.. autoclass:: Noodle
   :members: eat, slurp

   .. method:: boil(time=10)

      Boil the noodle *time* minutes.

Options and advanced usage

  • If you want to automatically document members, there’s a members option:

    .. automodule:: noodle
   :members:

    will document all module members (recursively), and

    .. autoclass:: Noodle
   :members:

    will document all non-private member functions and properties (that is, those whose name doesn’t start with _).

    For modules, __all__ will be respected when looking for members; the order of the members will also be the order in __all__.

    You can also give an explicit list of members; only these will then be documented:

    .. autoclass:: Noodle
   :members: eat, slurp

  • If you want to make the members option the default, see autodoc_default_flags.

  • Members without docstrings will be left out, unless you give the undoc-members flag option:

    .. automodule:: noodle
   :members:
   :undoc-members:

  • For classes and exceptions, members inherited from base classes will be left out, unless you give the inherited-members flag option, in addition to members:

    .. autoclass:: Noodle
   :members:
   :inherited-members:

    This can be combined with undoc-members to document all available members of the class or module.

    Note: this will lead to markup errors if the inherited members come from a module whose docstrings are not reST formatted.

    New in version 0.3.

  • It’s possible to override the signature for explicitly documented callable objects (functions, methods, classes) with the regular syntax that will override the signature gained from introspection:

    .. autoclass:: Noodle(type)

   .. automethod:: eat(persona)

    This is useful if the signature from the method is hidden by a decorator.

    New in version 0.4.

  • The automodule, autoclass and autoexception directives also support a flag option called show-inheritance. When given, a list of base classes will be inserted just below the class signature (when used with automodule, this will be inserted for every class that is documented in the module).

    New in version 0.4.

  • All autodoc directives support the noindex flag option that has the same effect as for standard py:function etc. directives: no index entries are generated for the documented object (and all autodocumented members).

    New in version 0.4.

  • automodule also recognizes the synopsis, platform and deprecated options that the standard py:module directive supports.

    New in version 0.5.

  • automodule and autoclass also has an member-order option that can be used to override the global value of autodoc_member_order for one directive.

    New in version 0.6.

  • The directives supporting member documentation also have a exclude-members option that can be used to exclude single member names from documentation, if all members are to be documented.

    New in version 0.6.

Note

In an automodule directive with the members option set, only module members whose __module__ attribute is equal to the module name as given to automodule will be documented. This is to prevent documentation of imported classes or functions.

.. autofunction::
.. autodata::
.. automethod::
.. autoattribute::

These work exactly like autoclass etc., but do not offer the options used for automatic member documentation.

For module data members and class attributes, documentation can either be put into a special-formatted comment before the attribute definition, or in a docstring after the definition. This means that in the following class definition, all attributes can be autodocumented:

class Foo:
    """Docstring for class Foo."""

    #: Doc comment for class attribute Foo.bar.
    bar = 1

    baz = 2
    """Docstring for class attribute Foo.baz."""

    def __init__(self):
        #: Doc comment for instance attribute qux.
        self.qux = 3

        self.spam = 4
        """Docstring for instance attribute spam."""

Changed in version 0.6: autodata and autoattribute can now extract docstrings.

Note

If you document decorated functions or methods, keep in mind that autodoc retrieves its docstrings by importing the module and inspecting the __doc__ attribute of the given function or method. That means that if a decorator replaces the decorated function with another, it must copy the original __doc__ to the new function.

From Python 2.5, functools.wraps() can be used to create well-behaved decorating functions.

There are also new config values that you can set:

autoclass_content

This value selects what content will be inserted into the main body of an autoclass directive. The possible values are:

"class"
Only the class’ docstring is inserted. This is the default. You can still document __init__ as a separate method using automethod or the members option to autoclass.
"both"
Both the class’ and the __init__ method’s docstring are concatenated and inserted.
"init"
Only the __init__ method’s docstring is inserted.

New in version 0.3.

autodoc_member_order

This value selects if automatically documented members are sorted alphabetical (value 'alphabetical'), by member type (value 'groupwise') or by source order (value 'bysource'). The default is alphabetical.

Note that for source order, the module must be a Python module with the source code available.

New in version 0.6.

Changed in version 1.0: Support for 'bysource'.

autodoc_default_flags

This value is a list of autodoc directive flags that should be automatically applied to all autodoc directives. The supported flags are 'members', 'undoc-members', 'inherited-members' and 'show-inheritance'.

If you set one of these flags in this config value, you can use a negated form, 'no-flag', in an autodoc directive, to disable it once. For example, if autodoc_default_flags is set to ['members', 'undoc-members'], and you write a directive like this:

.. automodule:: foo
   :no-undoc-members:

the directive will be interpreted as if only :members: was given.

New in version 1.0.

Docstring preprocessing

autodoc provides the following additional events:

autodoc-process-docstring(app, what, name, obj, options, lines)

New in version 0.4.

Emitted when autodoc has read and processed a docstring. lines is a list of strings – the lines of the processed docstring – that the event handler can modify in place to change what Sphinx puts into the output.

Param app:the Sphinx application object
Param what:the type of the object which the docstring belongs to (one of "module", "class", "exception", "function", "method", "attribute")
Param name:the fully qualified name of the object
Param obj:the object itself
Param options:the options given to the directive: an object with attributes inherited_members, undoc_members, show_inheritance and noindex that are true if the flag option of same name was given to the auto directive
Param lines:the lines of the docstring, see above
autodoc-process-signature(app, what, name, obj, options, signature, return_annotation)

New in version 0.5.

Emitted when autodoc has formatted a signature for an object. The event handler can return a new tuple (signature, return_annotation) to change what Sphinx puts into the output.

Param app:the Sphinx application object
Param what:the type of the object which the docstring belongs to (one of "module", "class", "exception", "function", "method", "attribute")
Param name:the fully qualified name of the object
Param obj:the object itself
Param options:the options given to the directive: an object with attributes inherited_members, undoc_members, show_inheritance and noindex that are true if the flag option of same name was given to the auto directive
Param signature:
 function signature, as a string of the form "(parameter_1, parameter_2)", or None if introspection didn’t succeed and signature wasn’t specified in the directive.
Param return_annotation:
 function return annotation as a string of the form " -> annotation", or None if there is no return annotation

The sphinx.ext.autodoc module provides factory functions for commonly needed docstring processing in event autodoc-process-docstring:

sphinx.ext.autodoc.cut_lines(pre, post=0, what=None)

Return a listener that removes the first pre and last post lines of every docstring. If what is a sequence of strings, only docstrings of a type in what will be processed.

Use like this (e.g. in the setup() function of conf.py):

from sphinx.ext.autodoc import cut_lines
app.connect('autodoc-process-docstring', cut_lines(4, what=['module']))

This can (and should) be used in place of automodule_skip_lines.

sphinx.ext.autodoc.between(marker, what=None, keepempty=False, exclude=False)

Return a listener that either keeps, or if exclude is True excludes, lines between lines that match the marker regular expression. If no line matches, the resulting docstring would be empty, so no change will be made unless keepempty is true.

If what is a sequence of strings, only docstrings of a type in what will be processed.

Skipping members

autodoc allows the user to define a custom method for determining whether a member should be included in the documentation by using the following event:

autodoc-skip-member(app, what, name, obj, skip, options)

New in version 0.5.

Emitted when autodoc has to decide whether a member should be included in the documentation. The member is excluded if a handler returns True. It is included if the handler returns False.

Param app:the Sphinx application object
Param what:the type of the object which the docstring belongs to (one of "module", "class", "exception", "function", "method", "attribute")
Param name:the fully qualified name of the object
Param obj:the object itself
Param skip:a boolean indicating if autodoc will skip this member if the user handler does not override the decision
Param options:the options given to the directive: an object with attributes inherited_members, undoc_members, show_inheritance and noindex that are true if the flag option of same name was given to the auto directive