Docstrings will be indented once off the symbol they are attached to. Sphinx is far and away the most popular python documentation tool. Together with handwritten documentation, this technique eases the pain of having to maintain two locations for documentation, while at the same time avoiding autogeneratedlooking pure api documentation. Although originally designed for aiding in documentation of python software, it is now being used for documentation of packages in other languages as well. Paragraph level markup read the docs sphinx theme 0. These are builtin strings that, when configured correctly, can help your users and yourself with your projects documentation. Unlike conventional source code comments, or even specifically formatted comments like javadoc documentation, docstrings are not stripped from the source tree when it is parsed and are retained throughout the runtime of the program. Using sphinx autodoc, is there a way to format a first line of a multiline docstring in a special way consider. The docstrings are formatted in a specific way so that sphinx can. False to disable support for numpy style docstrings. Sphinx is a tool that makes it easy to create intelligent and beautiful documentation, written by georg brandl and licensed under the bsd license.
Documenting your python code is all centered on docstrings. If no line matches, the resulting docstring would be empty, so no change will be made unless keepempty is true. The general format for writing a multiline docstring is as follows. Lets see the main available syntax formats for the python docstrings. For example the last three lines will be joined in a single paragraph for the docstring in msg319848. The most common use of docstrings appears to be providing help and useful meta data. Add a glossary rst sphinx sublime github documentation. Using sphinx for python documentation shuns vineyard. Documenting your project using sphinx python hosted. First, write doc strings in all key classes, methods, and functions using the formatting options defined by sphinx and second is configuring and using sphinx for document generation. An idiots guide to python documentation with sphinx and. This covers just a few of the many many commands available via sphinx.
It was originally created for the python documentation, and it has excellent facilities for the documentation of software projects in a range of languages. A tag that means this is a python something, guess what. See sphinxexamples for a list of other projects that use sphinx. In the right sidebar, you should find a link show source, which shows the rst source code. You can then use all of the usual sphinx markup in the docstrings, and it will end up correctly in the documentation.
Include other rst files with the toctree directive. This example shows how to document your docstrings and how to interpret it within your rst document. The idea behind the auto directives is to keep as much documentation in the code docstrings as possible. Python documentation strings or docstrings provide a convenient way of associating documentation with python modules, functions, classes, and. For example, docstrings could be extracted to create a map of the code structure or identify code blocks assigned to a test suite. Comments need to be either on a line of their own before the definition, or immediately after the assignment on the same line. This really should have a full function definition, but i am too lazy. Provides detailed logging and notification of any application network activity. Restructured text rest and sphinx cheatsheet sphinx. Python docstring is the documentation string which is string literal, and it occurs in the class, module, function or method definition, and it is written as a first statement. Documentation style guidelines apache software foundation. In the sentence the pop3 class, we need to markup pop3 so. However, sphinx still aims to give you control not found when using real auto tools like doxygen or epydoc.
Its specified in source code that is used, like a comment, to document a. So readers using such programs actually lose some content. This entire document is written with the rst syntax. However the default sphinx docstring format was not mentioned and is based on restructuredtext rest. Note that it is best to write the docstrings once you have fully defined the functionclass, as then the extension will generate the full dosctring. Because good python code is quite clear on its own, keep docstrings informative but simple. Sphinx converts restructuredtext files into html websites and other formats including pdf, epub, texinfo and man. Docstrings napoleon interprets every docstring that sphinx autodoc can find, including docstrings on. Python docstrings should always appear on the line underneath the symbol they are attached to. Python project documentation using sphinx codeproject. Napoleon marching toward legible docstrings napoleon 0.
Python documentation strings or docstrings provide a convenient way of associating documentation with. This tool was created to support handwritten documentation files in the restructuredtext. Note that this format is used for the python documentation. Designed to replace epydoc and works on both python 2 and 3. Together with handwritten documentation, this technique eases the pain of having to maintain two locations for documentation, while at the same time avoiding auto. Its specified in source code that is used, like a comment, to document a specific segment of code. The stubs contain automodule directives which in turn inform sphinxbuild to invoke autodoc to do the heavy lifting of actually generating the api documentation from the docstrings of a particular module. Along with docstrings, python also has the builtin function help that prints out the objects docstring to the console. If sphinx complains about docstrings in the stlib, dont run sphinx for the stdlib files or report a sphinx bug. We organize python docstrings into sections that appear in a common order. They must be together, and all indents should be four spaces. Napoleon interprets every docstring that sphinx autodoc can find, including docstrings on. Prevents undesired programs and windows updates, informational incoming and outgoing leakage of applications running locally or remotely.
This pep proposes that the restructuredtext markup be adopted as a standard markup format for structured plaintext documentation in python docstrings, and for peps and ancillary documents as well. Filename, size file type python version upload date hashes. If you run sphinx, it will create the basic scaffold for the documentation of your project. Sphinx has the notion of a version and a release for the software. An objects docsting is defined by including a string constant as the first statement in the objects definition. Nobody sphinx has the notion of a version and a release for the software. Therefore, that is why you need the small stub file code. In python docstrings it will be necessary to escape any backslash characters so that they actually. To add a text with a hyperlink, i like using this format. Splitting documentation between docstrings and sphinx. Sections are created with a section header and a colon followed by a block of indented text.
At first, you will be seeing the sphinx style in detail, and then you can easily follow along with other. If you want the extension to generate docstrings in sphinx format, you must set the autodocstring. Ive found that out of the box, i just get a screenful of importerrors from autodoc. Inside each docstring, specially formatted sections are parsed and converted to restructuredtext. Sphinx and its python support, as well as rest markup, have various quirks that demand discipline. Python docstrings can be written following several formats as the other posts showed. You can get some information about the main formats in this blog post.
You can see the literal source for this file at this file. This happens in an intermediate step while sphinx is. Darglint can handle sphinxstyle docstrings, but imposes some restrictions on top of the sphinx style. For creating the inheritance diagrams the graphviz package is needed. Sphinx is a tool that makes it easy to create intelligent and beautiful.
The folder that contains all the documentation is called docs. Restructured text rest and sphinx cheatsheet sphinx and. When plaintext hasnt been expressive enough for inline documentation, python programmers have sought out a format for docstrings. For example, for python the version is something like 2. Python documentation strings or docstrings provide a convenient way of associating documentation with python modules, functions, classes, and methods. This format is based on the original numpydoc style guide used by numpy, scipy, and astropy, among other scientific python packages, though this style guide includes several dmspecific clarifications. An api reference is typically generated from the code see docstrings. All standard restructuredtext formatting still works as expected. Documentation style guide style guide for sphinxbased.
This happens in an intermediate step while sphinx is processing the documentation, so it doesnt modify any of the docstrings in your actual source code. In programming, a docstring is a string literal specified in source code that is used, like a comment, to document a specific segment of code. In some cases, docstrings can include formatting instructions, for example, to bold text or set heading level. Unlike conventional source code comments, the docstring should describe what the function.
Writing docstrings sphinxrtdtutorial documentation. It uses the rest syntax, that is quite simple to learn and has the advantagse to be human readable useful for the docstrings. Docstrings are accessible from the doc attribute for any of the python object and also with the builtin help function can come in handy. Using sphinx to generate reference guide is not as straightforward as using a tool such as epydoc but brings a much more flexible and powerful tool that allows us to create user guide and tutorials as well. This tool was created to support handwritten documentation. The current standard tool for documenting python software is sphinx. With sphinx, you can autodocument this module by including the following code within a rst document. These should be primarily for project devs and anyone digging into the source code. Let us consider a python module called template see bottom of the page. Docstrings in source code should not use sphinx directives, using only light rest formatting for readability. Sphinx and the rst syntax provides directives to include formatted text. The sympy websites primary function is to advertise the software to users. Documentation is done with sphinx and some helper functions coming with the software for more customization. Windows 10 there is currently very little support for python docstrings, at least using the rest format that we use in our project.