rest

`sphinx.ext.autodoc` -- Include documentation from docstrings

sphinx.ext.autodoc

pair: automatic; documentation single: docstring

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.

Warning

~sphinx.ext.autodoc imports the modules to be documented. If any modules have side effects on import, these will be executed by autodoc when sphinx-build is run.

If you document scripts (as opposed to library modules), make sure their main routine is protected by a if __name__ == '__main__' condition.

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.

If you prefer NumPy or Google style docstrings over reStructuredText, you can also enable the napoleon <sphinx.ext.napoleon> extension. napoleon <sphinx.ext.napoleon> is a preprocessor that converts your docstrings to correct reStructuredText before autodoc processes them.

Directives

autodoc provides several directives that are versions of the usual :rstpy:module, :rstpy: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 :rstpy:module, :rstpy:class etc. directive.

Note

Just as :rstpy:class respects the current :rstpy:module, :rstautoclass will also do so. Likewise, :rstautomethod will respect the current :rstpy:class.

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

Options and advanced usage
If you want to make the members option (or other options described below) the default, see autodoc_default_options.
Tip

You can use a negated form, 'no-{flag}', as an option of autodoc directive, to disable it temporarily. For example:
.. automodule:: foo
   :no-undoc-members:
Tip

You can use autodoc directive options to temporarily override or extend default options which takes list as an input. For example:
.. autoclass:: Noodle
   :members: eat
   :private-members: +_spicy, _garlickly
3.5 The default options can be overridden or extended temporarily.
autodoc considers a member private if its docstring contains :meta private: in its info-field-lists. For example:
def my_function(my_arg, my_other_arg):
    """blah blah blah

    :meta private:
    """
3.0
autodoc considers a member public if its docstring contains :meta public: in its info-field-lists, even if it starts with an underscore. For example:
def _my_function(my_arg, my_other_arg):
    """blah blah blah

    :meta public:
    """
3.1
autodoc considers a variable member does not have any default value if its docstring contains :meta hide-value: in its info-field-lists. Example:
var1 = None  #: :meta hide-value:
3.5
For classes and exceptions, members inherited from base classes will be left out when documenting all members, unless you give the inherited-members 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.

It can take an ancestor class not to document inherited members from it. By default, members of object class are not documented. To show them all, give None to the option.

For example; If your class Foo is derived from list class and you don't want to document list.__len__(), you should specify a option :inherited-members: list to avoid special members of list class.

Another example; If your class Foo has __str__ special method and autodoc directive has both inherited-members and special-members, __str__ will be documented as in the past, but other special method that are not implemented in your class Foo.

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

0.3

3.0

It takes an ancestor class name as an argument.
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.

0.4
The :rstautomodule, :rstautoclass and :rstautoexception 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 :rstautomodule, this will be inserted for every class that is documented in the module).

0.4

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

0.4

:rstautomodule also recognizes the synopsis, platform and deprecated options that the standard :rstpy:module directive supports.

0.5

:rstautomodule and :rstautoclass also has an member-order option that can be used to override the global value of autodoc_member_order for one directive.

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.

0.6

In an :rstautomodule 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. Set the imported-members option if you want to prevent this behavior and document all available members. Note that attributes from imported modules will not be documented, because attribute documentation is discovered by parsing the source file of the current module.

1.2

Add a list of modules in the autodoc_mock_imports to prevent import errors to halt the building process when some external dependencies are not importable at build time.

1.3
As a hint to autodoc extension, you can put a :: separator in between module name and object name to let autodoc know the correct module name if it is ambiguous. :
.. autoclass:: module.name::Noodle
:rstautoclass also recognizes the class-doc-from option that can be used to override the global value of autoclass_content.

4.1

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

:rstautodata and :rstautoattribute support the annotation option. The option controls how the value of variable is shown. If specified without arguments, only the name of the variable will be printed, and its value is not shown:
.. autodata:: CD_DRIVE
   :annotation:
If the option specified with arguments, it is printed after the name as a value of the variable:
.. autodata:: CD_DRIVE
   :annotation: = your CD device name
By default, without annotation option, Sphinx tries to obtain the value of the variable and print it after the name.

The no-value option can be used instead of a blank annotation to show the type hint but not the value:
.. autodata:: CD_DRIVE
   :no-value:
If both the annotation and no-value options are used, no-value has no effect.

For module data members and class attributes, documentation can either be put into a comment with special formatting (using a #: to start the comment instead of just #), 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."""
0.6 :rstautodata and :rstautoattribute can now extract docstrings.

1.1 Comment docs are now allowed on the same line after an assignment.

1.2 :rstautodata and :rstautoattribute have an annotation option.

2.0 :rstautodecorator added.

3.4 :rstautodata and :rstautoattribute now have a no-value option.

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.

Configuration

There are also config values that you can set:

autoclass_content

This value selects what content will be inserted into the main body of an :rstautoclass 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 :rstautomethod or the members option to :rstautoclass.
"both": Both the class' and the __init__ method's docstring are concatenated and inserted.
"init": Only the __init__ method's docstring is inserted.

0.3

If the class has no __init__ method or if the __init__ method's docstring is empty, but the class has a __new__ method's docstring, it is used instead.

1.4

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.

0.6

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', 'private-members', 'special-members', 'inherited-members', 'show-inheritance', 'ignore-module-all' and 'exclude-members'.

1.0

1.8

Integrated into autodoc_default_options.

autodoc_default_options

The default options for autodoc directives. They are applied to all autodoc directives automatically. It must be a dictionary which maps option names to the values. For example:

autodoc_default_options = {
    'members': 'var1, var2',
    'member-order': 'bysource',
    'special-members': '__init__',
    'undoc-members': True,
    'exclude-members': '__weakref__'
}

Setting None or True to the value is equivalent to giving only the option name to the directives.

The supported options are 'members', 'member-order', 'undoc-members', 'private-members', 'special-members', 'inherited-members', 'show-inheritance', 'ignore-module-all', 'imported-members', 'exclude-members' and 'class-doc-from'.

1.8

2.0 Accepts True as a value.

2.1 Added 'imported-members'.

4.1 Added 'class-doc-from'.

autodoc_docstring_signature

Functions imported from C modules cannot be introspected, and therefore the signature for such functions cannot be automatically determined. However, it is an often-used convention to put the signature into the first line of the function's docstring.

If this boolean value is set to True (which is the default), autodoc will look at the first line of the docstring for functions and methods, and if it looks like a signature, use the line as the signature and remove it from the docstring content.

autodoc will continue to look for multiple signature lines, stopping at the first line that does not look like a signature. This is useful for declaring overloaded function signatures.

1.1

3.1

Support overloaded signatures

4.0

Overloaded signatures do not need to be separated by a backslash

autodoc_mock_imports

This value contains a list of modules to be mocked up. This is useful when some external dependencies are not met at build time and break the building process. You may only specify the root package of the dependencies themselves and omit the sub-modules:

autodoc_mock_imports = ["django"]

Will mock all imports under the django package.

1.3

1.6 This config value only requires to declare the top-level modules that should be mocked.

autodoc_typehints

This value controls how to represent typehints. The setting takes the following values:

'signature' -- Show typehints as its signature (default)
'description' -- Show typehints as content of function or method
'none' -- Do not show typehints

2.1

3.0

New option 'description' is added.

autodoc_typehints_description_target

This value controls whether the types of undocumented parameters and return values are documented when autodoc_typehints is set to description.

The default value is "all", meaning that types are documented for all parameters and return values, whether they are documented or not.

When set to "documented", types will only be documented for a parameter or a return value that is already documented by the docstring.

4.0

autodoc_type_aliases

A dictionary for users defined type aliases__ that maps a type name to the full-qualified object name. It is used to keep type aliases not evaluated in the document. Defaults to empty ({}).

The type aliases are only available if your program enables Postponed Evaluation of Annotations (PEP 563)__ feature via from __future__ import annotations.

For example, there is code using a type alias:

from __future__ import annotations

AliasType = Union[List[Dict[Tuple[int, str], Set[int]]], Tuple[str, List[str]]]

def f() -> AliasType:
    ...

If autodoc_type_aliases is not set, autodoc will generate internal mark-up from this code as following:

.. py:function:: f() -> Union[List[Dict[Tuple[int, str], Set[int]]], Tuple[str, List[str]]]

   ...

If you set autodoc_type_aliases as {'AliasType': 'your.module.AliasType'}, it generates the following document internally:

.. py:function:: f() -> your.module.AliasType:

   ...

3.3

autodoc_preserve_defaults

If True, the default argument values of functions will be not evaluated on generating document. It preserves them as is in the source code.

4.0

Added as an experimental feature. This will be integrated into autodoc core in the future.

autodoc_warningiserror

This value controls the behavior of sphinx-build -W during importing modules. If False is given, autodoc forcedly suppresses the error if the imported module emits warnings. By default, True.

autodoc_inherit_docstrings

This value controls the docstrings inheritance. If set to True the docstring for classes or methods, if not explicitly set, is inherited from parents.

The default is True.

1.7

suppress_warnings

autodoc supports to suppress warning messages via suppress_warnings. It allows following warnings types in addition:

autodoc
autodoc.import_object

Docstring preprocessing

autodoc provides the following additional events:

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

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-before-process-signature (app, obj, bound_method)

2.4

Emitted before autodoc formats a signature for an object. The event handler can modify an object to change its signature.

param app: the Sphinx application object
param obj: the object itself
param bound_method: a boolean indicates an object is bound method or not

autodoc-process-signature (app, what, name, obj, options, signature, return_annotation)

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:

cut_lines

between

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)

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.

If more than one enabled extension handles the autodoc-skip-member event, autodoc will use the first non-None value returned by a handler. Handlers should return None to fall back to the skipping behavior of autodoc and other enabled extensions.

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

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`sphinx.ext.autodoc` -- Include documentation from docstrings

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sphinx.ext.autodoc -- Include documentation from docstrings

Directives

Configuration

Docstring preprocessing

Skipping members

`sphinx.ext.autodoc` -- Include documentation from docstrings