sphinxcontrib-documentedlist 0.6

Sphinx DocumentedList extension

This file provides a Sphinx extension to convert a Python list into a table in the generated documentation. The intended application of this extension is to document the items of essentially list-like objects of immutable data (possibly enums, though python 3.4 enums are not supported yet).

In the source code, each list item, instead of being just it’s native data type, should be replaced by a tuple of two elements. In the simpest application, the second element of the tuple should be a string which provides a description for the item.

The following options are also included to enable slightly more complex use cases :

header:

The number of columns displayed is 2 by default, with titles “Item” and “Description”. This option allows you to add a custom header and change the number of columns in the table:

.. documentedlist::
    :listobject: some.list.object
    :header: "First Name" "Last Name" Email

spantolast:

If this flag is present, the last column of any row with an insufficient number of columns will spread to span all remaining columns. This would typically be used to insert headings within the table:

.. documentedlist::
    :listobject: some.list.object
    :spantolast:

descend:

This flag allows you to construct a relatively complex table. with subsections. Any row containing a list as one of it’s cells is expanded into a sub-table (specifically, a docutils tgroup). The list is popped from the original row, and each element of the list is turned into a row:

.. documentedlist::
    :listobject: some.list.object
    :descend:

In the first use of this extension, the aim was to document a list of supported device classes (each of which is a string). This was originally specified in the python code as a list, and the same list with descriptions was manually maintained (or, in reality, left unmaintained) in the corresponding documentation. The list is now replaced with a tuple containing both the recognized strings and the description for each, and Sphinx is able to use this extension to ‘autogenerate’ the table in the documentation.

Based heavily on slides from Doug Hellman’s PyCon talk, http://www.slideshare.net/doughellmann/better-documentation-through-automation-creating-docutils-sphinx-extensions

Installation & Usage

This extension is part of the sphinxcontrib namespace and can be installed from pypi :

pip install sphinxcontrib-documentedlist

In the .rst file where the table should appear, insert the Sphinx directive provided by this module :

.. documentedlist::
    :listobject: full.importable.path.of.thelist

This extension will import the list as :

from full.importable.path.of import thelist

For a basic usage example, see:

Python:

https://github.com/chintal/tendril/blob/master/tendril/conventions/electronics.py#L28

ReST:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chintal/tendril/master/doc/userdoc/conventions/gedasymbols.rst (Device Classes)

Generated:

http://tendril.chintal.in/doc/userdoc/conventions/gedasymbols/#device-classes

For a more complex example of the extension’s usage, including the :header:, :spantolast:, and :descend: options, see:

Python:

https://github.com/chintal/tendril/blob/master/tendril/utils/config.py#L791

ReST:

https://github.com/chintal/tendril/blob/master/tendril/utils/config.py#L67

Generated:

http://tendril.chintal.in/doc/apidoc/tendril.utils.config/#configuration-options

License

This Sphinx Extension is made available under the BSD 2-clause License. See sphinxcontrib’s LICENSE file for the full text.

Thanks

• Maximilian Hils (github @mhils)