I have a bunch of classes which use "special-methods":
class Foo(object):
"Foo docstring"
attr1 = "Attribute!" #: first attribute
attr2 = "Another Attribute!" #: second attribute
def __init__(self):
self.x = 12
def say_hello(self):
"""
say_hello(self) -> None
Issue a friendly greeting.
"""
print "Hello! x is {0}".format(self.x)
def __contains__(self,other):
"""Implement ``other in self``"""
return other == self.x
now I would like to generate html documentation for this using Sphinx and autodoc. How do I tell Sphinx to document __contains__
? I tried adding
autodoc_default_flags = ['members', 'undoc-members', 'special-members']
to conf.py
, but that also included __dict__
which I definitely don't want.
Currently, the relevant portions of the myproject.rst
file look like:
.. automodule:: myproject.foomodule
:members:
:undoc-members:
:show-inheritance:
edit adding
.. automodule:: myproject.foomodule
:members:
:undoc-members:
:show-inheritance:
.. automethod:: myproject.foomodule.Foo.__contains__
does add documentation of that method, but in a separate section -- Not as part of the Foo
class documentation.
You can add:
:special-members:
:exclude-members: __dict__,__weakref__
To the .rst
file in order to show special members, except __dict__
and __weakref__
What worked for me is adding the ".. automethod:: methodName"
directive in the docstring of the class, instead of doing it in the .rst file.
So, you can change "Foo docstring" to
"""
Foo docstring
.. automethod:: __contains__
"""
The special-members option now takes arguments (this is a new feature in Sphinx 1.2).
So this should work:
.. automodule:: myproject.foomodule
:members:
:undoc-members:
:special-members: __contains__
:show-inheritance:
I'm currently not 100% thrilled with this solution, so I hope someone can come along an improve it. However, the way I've solved this problem is to do the following:
.. automodule:: myproject.foomodule
:members:
:undoc-members:
:show-inheritance:
.. autoclass:: myproject.foomodule.Foo
:exclude-members: attr1,attr2
.. autoattribute:: myproject.foomodule.Foo.attr1
.. autoattribute:: myproject.foomodule.Foo.attr2
.. automethod:: myproject.foomodule.Foo.__contains__
Here I actually need to tell autodoc
to avoid documenting the class attributes (automatically) and then I need to add them back on explicitly. The reason is because apparently when you explicitly nest commands, the explicit ones come first. If I only explicitly say to add __contains__
, then it shows up before the attributes which I didn't like.
Since Sphinx 1.8, you can use autodoc_default_options in conf.py
. 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.
Note that you can give several values in one string: '__init__,__call__
'.