Another thing that people may find useful...make sure to leave off ".py" from your module name. For example, if you are trying to generate documentation for 'original' in 'original.py':
Answer from K.S. on Stack Overflowyourcode_dir$ pydoc -w original.py no Python documentation found for 'original.py' yourcode_dir$ pydoc -w original wrote original.html
What tools do you use to auto-generate api docs in python packages?
python - How do I create documentation with Pydoc? - Stack Overflow
Generating documentation automatically for python functions
What do you use for documentation generators?
I use Sphinx. It is possible to have docs link to other modules as well
More on reddit.comHey,
I've been lately writing Declarai, an open-source llm-related library.
The need for a clear API reference documentation came fast and I started looking for good auto-generate documentation tools.
Up until now, I found mkdocstrings the best choice as im using mkdocs anyhow.
Do you guys aware of any other great tools for api documentation auto-generation ?
Another thing that people may find useful...make sure to leave off ".py" from your module name. For example, if you are trying to generate documentation for 'original' in 'original.py':
yourcode_dir$ pydoc -w original.py no Python documentation found for 'original.py' yourcode_dir$ pydoc -w original wrote original.html
pydoc is fantastic for generating documentation, but the documentation has to be written in the first place. You must have docstrings in your source code as was mentioned by RocketDonkey in the comments:
"""
This example module shows various types of documentation available for use
with pydoc. To generate HTML documentation for this module issue the
command:
pydoc -w foo
"""
class Foo(object):
"""
Foo encapsulates a name and an age.
"""
def __init__(self, name, age):
"""
Construct a new 'Foo' object.
:param name: The name of foo
:param age: The ageof foo
:return: returns nothing
"""
self.name = name
self.age = age
def bar(baz):
"""
Prints baz to the display.
"""
print baz
if __name__ == '__main__':
f = Foo('John Doe', 42)
bar("hello world")
The first docstring provides instructions for creating the documentation with pydoc. There are examples of different types of docstrings so you can see how they look when generated with pydoc.