nanonyme / django-sphinx-autodoc

Add all your django docstrings into sphinx

Django-Sphinx-autodoc

Warning

This fork has code which is edited to allow you to generate the autodocs as Sphinx builds your docs however it is not yet fully working! Furthermore, running this code from conf.py might not be the correct approach with regard to sphinx

It is currently working as described in the last section of this readme.

Django is very nice in that way you can reuse a lot of applications in your projects. It means for big projects that you'll get a long list of applications in your settings.INSTALLED_APP.

If you're using Django with Sphinx and want to autodoc all these apps in a wink of an eye, then this app is for you.

A good combinaison for documenting your project would be:

• sphinx
• django-sphinx-autodoc to generate the doc from your applications
• django-sphinxdoc to integrate the sphinx doc in your website

How it works

Copy the generate_autodoc.py file in your project directory, then execute it.

It will scrape all your .py files in each application listed by INSTALLED_APP, then add automodules in your DS_ROOT/modules.rst.

You will then see your applications grouped in 2 different categories:

• internal application is an application located in your project directory
• external application is an app which is somewhere in your pythonpath (preferably in your virtualenv)

Good Practices

Add a docstring in your application's __init__.py file to describe it. django-sphinx-autodoc will automatically scrape it for you.

Settings

You can modify some of the settings used by django-sphinx-autodoc:

• DS_ROOT: root path for documentation (default to project_dir/doc)
• DS_MASTER_DOC: name of your master document (default to "index.rst")
• DS_FILENAME: name for the modules (default to "auto_modules.rst")
• DS_EXCLUDED_APPS: list of applications to exclude (default to [])
• DS_EXCLUDED_MODULES: list of files to exclude (default to ["__init__.py"])

TODO

• Write tests
• improve the not_relevant stuff to auto exclude a file without class or def
• Django command extension to update the autodoc

ADDED SPECIAL CASE FUNCTIONALITY

If you want to generated the docs automatically and do not want to have to have this file living at your project root directory, you can use it in the following way.

Install this module via PIP or have it somewhere on your Python Path.

In you Sphinx conf.py file, usually found in the docs/ directory, add: :

# Link into generate autodocs via Django-Sphinx-Autodoc
try:
    import generate_autodoc
except ImportError:
    print ("There was an issue importing the Autodoc function module.")

PROJECT_DIR = os.path.abspath( os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), "..") )
PROJECT_DIRNAME = PROJECT_DIR.split('/')[-1]
project_dir = lambda p: os.path.abspath( os.path.join(PROJECT_DIR, p) )

DJANGO_AUTODOC_SETTINGS = {
    'PROJECT_ROOT': PROJECT_DIR,
    'DOCS_ROOT': project_dir('docs'),
    'MASTER_DOC': "index.rst",
    'FILENAME': "api/ref",
    'EXCLUDED_APPS': [
        'grappelli.dashboard',
        'grappelli',
        'filebrowser',
        'django.contrib.admin',
        'django.contrib.admindocs',
        'django.contrib.auth',
        'django.contrib.contenttypes',
        'django.contrib.databrowse',
    ],
    'EXCLUDED_MODULES': ["__init__.py", ],
}
generate_autodoc.generate_autodocs(DJANGO_AUTODOC_SETTINGS)

Now, when you run make HTML as the conf.py file is parsed by Sphinx, the docs will be generated.

Remember to include a link in your TOC somewhere to this file. For example, in this case I have

API/Reference Docs

api/ref

Note

The modified way I have set settings to be specified. This fork uses a dictionary.