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.

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.

.. 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 (or other flag options described below) the default, see :confval:`autodoc_default_flags`.

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

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

• “Private” members (that is, those named like _private or __private) will be included if the private-members flag option is given.

  New in version 1.1.

• Python “special” members (that is, those named like __special__) will be included if the special-members flag option is given:

  .. autoclass:: my.Class
     :members:
     :private-members:
     :special-members:
  

  would document both “private” and “special” members of the class.

  New in version 1.1.

• For classes and exceptions, members inherited from base classes will be left out when documenting all members, 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 :confval:`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, or in a docstring after the definition. Comments need to be either on a line of their own before the definition, or immediately after the assignment on the same line. The latter form is restricted to one line only.

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.
    #: It can have multiple lines.
    bar = 1

    flox = 1.5   #: Doc comment for Foo.flox. One line only.

    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.

Changed in version 1.1: Comment docs are now allowed on the same line after an assignment.

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: