sphinx.ext.autosummary -- Generate autodoc summaries

Added in version 0.6.

This extension generates function/method/attribute summary lists, similar to those output e.g. by Epydoc and other API doc generation tools. This is especially useful when your docstrings are long and detailed, and putting each one of them on a separate page makes them easier to read.

The sphinx.ext.autosummary extension does this in two parts:

  1. There is an autosummary directive for generating summary listings that contain links to the documented items, and short summary blurbs extracted from their docstrings.

  2. A autosummary directive also generates short "stub" files for the entries listed in its content. These files by default contain only the corresponding sphinx.ext.autodoc directive, but can be customized with templates.

    The sphinx-autogen script is also able to generate "stub" files from command line.

.. autosummary::

Insert a table that contains links to documented items, and a short summary blurb (the first sentence of the docstring) for each of them.

The autosummary directive can also optionally serve as a toctree entry for the included items. Optionally, stub .rst files for these items can also be automatically generated when autosummary_generate is True.

For example,

.. currentmodule:: sphinx

.. autosummary::

   environment.BuildEnvironment
   util.relative_uri

produces a table like this:

environment.BuildEnvironment(app)

The environment in which the ReST files are translated.

util.relative_uri(base, to)

Return a relative URL from base to to.

Autosummary preprocesses the docstrings and signatures with the same autodoc-process-docstring and autodoc-process-signature hooks as autodoc.

Options

:toctree: optional directory name

If you want the autosummary table to also serve as a toctree entry, use the toctree option, for example:

.. autosummary::
   :toctree: DIRNAME

   sphinx.environment.BuildEnvironment
   sphinx.util.relative_uri

The toctree option also signals to the sphinx-autogen script that stub pages should be generated for the entries listed in this directive. The option accepts a directory name as an argument; sphinx-autogen will by default place its output in this directory. If no argument is given, output is placed in the same directory as the file that contains the directive.

Added in version 0.6.

:caption: caption of ToC

Add a caption to the toctree.

Added in version 3.1.

:nosignatures:

Do not show function signatures in the summary.

Added in version 0.6.

:template: filename

Specify a custom template for rendering the summary. For example,

.. autosummary::
   :template: mytemplate.rst

   sphinx.environment.BuildEnvironment

would use the template mytemplate.rst in your templates_path to generate the pages for all entries listed. See Customizing templates below.

Added in version 1.0.

:recursive:

Generate documents for modules and sub-packages recursively. For example,

.. autosummary::
   :recursive:

   sphinx.environment.BuildEnvironment

Added in version 3.1.

sphinx-autogen -- generate autodoc stub pages

The sphinx-autogen script can be used to conveniently generate stub documentation pages for items included in autosummary listings.

For example, the command

$ sphinx-autogen -o generated *.rst

will read all autosummary tables in the *.rst files that have the :toctree: option set, and output corresponding stub pages in directory generated for all documented items. The generated pages by default contain text of the form:

sphinx.util.relative_uri
========================

.. autofunction:: sphinx.util.relative_uri

If the -o option is not given, the script will place the output files in the directories specified in the :toctree: options.

For more information, refer to the sphinx-autogen documentation

Generating stub pages automatically

If you do not want to create stub pages with sphinx-autogen, you can also use these config values:

autosummary_context

A dictionary of values to pass into the template engine's context for autosummary stubs files.

Added in version 3.1.

autosummary_generate

Boolean indicating whether to scan all found documents for autosummary directives, and to generate stub pages for each. It is enabled by default.

Can also be a list of documents for which stub pages should be generated.

The new files will be placed in the directories specified in the :toctree: options of the directives.

Changed in version 2.3: Emits autodoc-skip-member event as autodoc does.

Changed in version 4.0: Enabled by default.

autosummary_generate_overwrite

If true, autosummary overwrites existing files by generated stub pages. Defaults to true (enabled).

Added in version 3.0.

autosummary_mock_imports

This value contains a list of modules to be mocked up. See autodoc_mock_imports for more details. It defaults to autodoc_mock_imports.

Added in version 2.0.

autosummary_imported_members

A boolean flag indicating whether to document classes and functions imported in modules. Default is False

Added in version 2.1.

Changed in version 4.4: If autosummary_ignore_module_all is False, this configuration value is ignored for members listed in __all__.

autosummary_ignore_module_all

If False and a module has the __all__ attribute set, autosummary documents every member listed in __all__ and no others. Default is True

Note that if an imported member is listed in __all__, it will be documented regardless of the value of autosummary_imported_members. To match the behaviour of from module import *, set autosummary_ignore_module_all to False and autosummary_imported_members to True.

Added in version 4.4.

autosummary_filename_map

A dict mapping object names to filenames. This is necessary to avoid filename conflicts where multiple objects have names that are indistinguishable when case is ignored, on file systems where filenames are case-insensitive.

Added in version 3.2.

Customizing templates

Added in version 1.0.

You can customize the stub page templates, in a similar way as the HTML Jinja templates, see Templating. (TemplateBridge is not supported.)

Note

If you find yourself spending much time tailoring the stub templates, this may indicate that it's a better idea to write custom narrative documentation instead.

Autosummary uses the following Jinja template files:

  • autosummary/base.rst -- fallback template

  • autosummary/module.rst -- template for modules

  • autosummary/class.rst -- template for classes

  • autosummary/function.rst -- template for functions

  • autosummary/attribute.rst -- template for class attributes

  • autosummary/method.rst -- template for class methods

The following variables are available in the templates:

name

Name of the documented object, excluding the module and class parts.

objname

Name of the documented object, excluding the module parts.

fullname

Full name of the documented object, including module and class parts.

objtype

Type of the documented object, one of "module", "function", "class", "method", "attribute", "data", "object", "exception", "newvarattribute", "newtypedata", "property".

module

Name of the module the documented object belongs to.

class

Name of the class the documented object belongs to. Only available for methods and attributes.

underline

A string containing len(full_name) * '='. Use the underline filter instead.

members

List containing names of all members of the module or class. Only available for modules and classes.

inherited_members

List containing names of all inherited members of class. Only available for classes.

Added in version 1.8.0.

functions

List containing names of "public" functions in the module. Here, "public" means that the name does not start with an underscore. Only available for modules.

classes

List containing names of "public" classes in the module. Only available for modules.

exceptions

List containing names of "public" exceptions in the module. Only available for modules.

methods

List containing names of "public" methods in the class. Only available for classes.

attributes

List containing names of "public" attributes in the class/module. Only available for classes and modules.

Changed in version 3.1: Attributes of modules are supported.

modules

List containing names of "public" modules in the package. Only available for modules that are packages and the recursive option is on.

Added in version 3.1.

Additionally, the following filters are available

escape(s)

Escape any special characters in the text to be used in formatting RST contexts. For instance, this prevents asterisks making things bold. This replaces the builtin Jinja escape filter that does html-escaping.

underline(s, line='=')

Add a title underline to a piece of text.

For instance, {{ fullname | escape | underline }} should be used to produce the title of a page.

Note

You can use the autosummary directive in the stub pages. Stub pages are generated also based on these directives.