Python project documentation using sphinx codeproject. It also offers plaintext, pdf, epub, and latex builders. Python is also suitable as an extension language for customizable applications. This tutorial assumes you already know how blender works, and it focuses only on ge capabilities. Lets start by showcasing the folder structure that we should aim for. Have your packages toplevel directory sit right next to your sphinx makefileand conf. Further references for continuing to learn about sphinx and autogenerating your documentation are below. How to create a single file of sphinx based documentation g.
Nov 29, 2011 for example, if sphinx is directed to generate a pdf from a documentation source, the file would be placed in the build directory. When you need to read html builds of the documentation, best practice is to export documentation as static builds with sphinx build command, then host and serve these builds as static files. Sphinx is a python documentation generator, it was created to generate the python documentation, so it is a very complete tool. In this tutorial, ill be using sphinx and rinohtype to produce an html and pdf documentation files respectively to a simple api project i wrote. Enables a builder to publish to a confluence instance.
This is a tutorial introduction to quickly get you up and running with your own sphinx documentation system. This blog post provides an introduction to using sphinx for a simple python project. Sphinx uses restructuredtext as its markup language, and many of its strengths come from the power and. The current standard tool for documenting python documents is by using sphinx. 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. It generates documentation simply from your projects alreadyexisting public modules and objects docstrings, like sphinx apidoc or sphinx. Since the documentation for python sphinx is new, you may need to create initial versions of those related topics.
Such doc strings are typically referred to as api documentation. Were going to use the sphinx quickstart tool here, though its use is by no means necessary. As an example for todays tutorial, please grab this repo. Such applications could include voice control of your desktop, various automotive devices and intelligent houses. You can also submit your documents you want to share. The basic idea is that lightlyformatted plaintext documentation is transformed into html, pdf, and any other output format. The answer by vimalkumar velayudhan is really helpful, but, on the other hand, its too advanced to use for a common technical writer. You wont need to use this too much yet, but its good to be familiar with this file. This tutorial is a concise summary of other sphinx tutorials and will give you a quick overview of what sphinx can do for you. Please enter values for the following settings just press enter to accept a default value, if one is given in brackets. I am using sphinx to create documentation for my python project in windows. This tutorial will walk you through the initial steps writing restructuredtext and sphinx, and deploying that code to read the docs.
This tutorial will assume that you already have a basic sphinx project set up. Arnold schwarzenegger this speech broke the internet and most inspiring speech it changed my life. This document presents some of the tools available for working with restructuredtext. This tutorial is going to describe some applications of the cmusphinx toolkit. Sep 23, 2019 awesome sphinx python documentation generator a curated list of awesome extra libraries, software and resources for sphinx python documentation generator. It helps to have a python interpreter handy for handson experience, but all examples are selfcontained, so the tutorial can be read offline as well. Here is the folder structure of an example project, named simpleble see github repo and readthedocs documentation, which is also the package which we will base our tutorial on. This article will focus on generating sphinx documentation as automatic as possible, allowing to generate documentation out of your pydoc. You may also be interested in the very nice tutorial on how to create a customized documentation using sphinx written by the matplotlib developers. It normally contains a table of contents that will link to all other pages of the documentation. It hosts sphinx documentation, automatically building it each time you make a commit. Launch this rundebug configuration, as described in the section run applications. This means that it takes a bunch of source files in plain text, and generates a bunch of other awesome things, mainly html.
Not yet fully migrated from the previous version, so at the moment, they are broken into two different parts. Built with sphinx using a theme provided by read the docs. Sphinx has come a long way since this tutorial was first offered back on a cold february day in 2010, when the most recent version available was 0. If you dont have a specific reason for this, install pip and run pip install rst2pdf. This document is meant to give a tutorial like overview of all common tasks while using sphinx. To ease the process of getting started, sphinx provides a tool, sphinx quickstart, which will generate a documentation source directory and populate it with some defaults. For further reading i strongly suggest that you have a good read on the sphinx tutorial and documentation until you understood what it actually does. If you are going for serious documentation, sphinx is the choice. Aug 31, 2014 sphinx is a tool that makes it easy to create intelligent and beautiful documentation.
An introduction to sphinx and read the docs for technical writers. There is also a more detailed tutorial that shows how to create a small but complete application with flask. It is also the third occasion where ive spent a few hours and a dozen commits trying to work out how i made everything work last time. Html including windows html help, latex for printable pdf versions, epub, texinfo, manual pages, plain text. There are several different docstring formats which one can use in order to enable sphinxs autodoc extension to automatically generate documentation. See the sphinx documentation for several other supported formats. Sphinx is a powerful documentation generator that has many great features for writing technical documentation including. If you want to know about the sphinx details then have a look at useful links and atoneor theothertutorial. Licensed under a creative commons attributionsharealike 4. It is easy to use and will generate html, latex, pdf, and more. Getting started with sphinx sphinx is a powerful documentation generator that has many great features for writing technical documentation including. Lets say you have a python project consisting of a few.
This tutorial introduces the reader informally to the basic concepts and features of the python language and system. They contain an introduction to pandas main concepts and links to additional tutorials. These archives contain all the content in the documentation. For documentation, well use sphinx to generate it, and read the docs to publish it. You can also build it as a single page html document. Enter pdoc, the perfect documentation generator for smalltomediumsized, tidy python projects. Finally, clicking on basicclass should the documentation for the class in your source code. How to create pdf documentation with sphinx in windows. The resulting application is quite simple 1 class, 2 projects, few extension point contributions. How to create a single file of sphinx based documentation by george notaras is licensed under a creative commons attributionnoncommercialsharealike 4.
Its built in django, and is free to use for open source projects. This is the documentation for the sphinx documentation builder. Breathe provides a bridge between the sphinx and doxygen documentation systems. Common patterns are described in the patterns for flask section. If you are unsure, open the command prompt winrand type cmd. A simple tutorial on how to document your python project. Most windows users do not have python installed by default, so we begin with the installation of python itself. This behavior can be changed, but for consistency we will stick to the default format. Jun 17, 2018 in this tutorial, ill be using sphinx and rinohtype to produce an html and pdf documentation files respectively to a simple api project i wrote that manages a list of teacher records. Read the docs builds on top to provide hosting for sphinx documentation that keeps your docs up to date across versions. Populating our documentation sphinxrtdtutorial documentation. You can then use all of the usual sphinx markup in the docstrings, and it will end up correctly in the documentation. In this tutorial, ill be using sphinx and rinohtype to produce an html and pdf documentation files respectively to a simple api project i wrote that manages a list of teacher records github. There are two principal steps in making api documentation.
For examples of how sphinx source files look, use the show source links on all pages of the documentation apart from this welcome page. The rest of the docs describe each component of flask in. Generate web pages, printable pdfs, documents for ereaders epub, and more all from the same sources. By properly documenting your source code, sphinx will be able to generate nice looking documentation i like html for your project.
Once sphinx is installed, you can proceed with setting up your first sphinx project. Together, they are a wonderful set of tools that developers and technical. Generate sphinx documentation python documentation generator. There are several different docstring formats which one can use in order to enable sphinx s autodoc extension to automatically generate documentation. In this tutorial, ill be using sphinx and rinohtype to produce an html and pdf documentation files respectively to a simple api project i wrote that manages a list of teacher records. See the sphinx documentation for even more complex ways of building. For this tutorial we will use the sphinx format, since, as the name suggests, it is the standar format used with sphinx. If a techcomm team is unable to easily export documentation to pdf using the existing tool, then it doesnt prop. A little sphinx documentation tutorial at the pyastro16 workshop cdeilsphinxtutorial. This tutorial will guide you through the development of a simple application based on sphinx. The user guide provides indepth information on the key concepts of pandas with useful background information and explanation. You have two options for placing the build directory for sphinx output. After installing atlassian confluence builder for sphinx, a sphinx project can be configured to support the confluence builder.
Sphinx is what is called a documentation generator. The green arrows designate more info links leading to advanced sections about the described task. This is the third occasion that ive come to set up a python package with all the trimmings, including nice looking sphinx backed documentation hosted on readthedocs. For a more complete documentation on alea components and packages, please visit. Sphinx quick reference edit on github note your note should consist of one or more paragraphs, all indented so that they clearly belong to the note and not to the text or directive that follows. This section provides an overview of what python sphinx is, and why a developer might want to use it. Get started with installation and then get an overview with the quickstart. The following tutorial will provide a series of steps which will. Awesome sphinx python documentation generator github. Sphinx uses a superset of rst as its markup language and the documentation does not make it clear whether the full sphinx markup is supported.
Writing docstrings sphinxrtdtutorial documentation. If you want to have more control over the style of your output, its better to build the pdf. A simple tutorial on how to document your python project using. In this blog post, ill provide examples of how i like to set up the documentation for my python project using sphinx. By the end of the tutorial, you will be able to create a participantfriendly study on lookit that includes a survey and test trials, assign children to different experimental conditions, test and troubleshoot your study, download study data, contact participants, use and even edit this documentation.
For public projects, you may have a look at services like read the docs. Sphinx github webpage tutorials university of tennessee. Select docutil task rundebug configuration, and change it as required. Sphinx user manual, with api and configuration reference. Enables a builder to generate confluencecompatible markup documentation. I found many explanation how to do this in linux, but no good explanation how to do this in windows. Welcome to my sphinx tutorial, which is now in its fourth year at pycon.
It should also mention any large subjects within python sphinx, and link out to the related topics. For our use case you can think of it as a program that takes in plain text files in restructuredtext format, and outputs html. This python document generator uses restructuredtest as its markup language. This is the index file for the documentation, or what lives at. Now that we have setup everything, it is time we started populating our documentation. If you want to have more control over the style of your output, its better to build the pdf via latex. You can find here basic guides and procedures for using openalea and visualea, together with instructions on how to develop your own package. However, thanks to the power of sphinx, it is really functional. Well cover installing sphinx, customizing the look and feel, using custom extensions for embedding plots, inheritance diagrams, syntax highlighted ipython sessions and more. As stated in the documentation, this project relies on and makes use of 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. We will tackle simple theming tasks during the tutorial s second half. For example, if sphinx is directed to generate a pdf from a documentation source, the file would be placed in the build directory. Djangos documentation uses the sphinx documentation system, which in turn is based on docutils.
The restructuredtext book documentation, release 1. This modified text is an extract of the original stack overflow documentation created by following contributors and released under cc bysa 3. To ease the process of getting started, sphinx provides a tool, sphinxquickstart, which will generate a documentation source directory and populate it with some defaults. How to create a pdf out of sphinx documentation tool. This document is meant to give a tutoriallike overview of all common tasks while using sphinx. Sphinx supports automatic generation of module or package documentation based on parsing function headers and extracting doc strings. Documentation style guide style guide for sphinxbased. Sphinx is a tool that makes it easy to create intelligent and beautiful documentation, written by georg brandl and licensed under the bsd license. How to create a pdfoutofsphinxdocumentationtool stack. An introduction to sphinx and read the docs for technical.
Sphinx also adds a few custom directives the prefixed functions like the toctree which allows you to embed the table of contents and link to another document. This document is a summary of my valueable experiences in using python decumentation sphinx with github webpage. Once you have a virtualenv set up, you can install autoapi with the command. An idiots guide to python documentation with sphinx and. Cmusphinx tutorial for developers cmusphinx open source. Python documentation using sphinx patricks software blog. As far as i understand i need to create latex format with sphinx, and than. For our use case you can think of it as a program that takes in plain text files.
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