autoattribute for parallel assignment of instance variables

Question

When documenting instance variables, I can do

class Foo:
    def __init__(self):
        self.spam = 4
        """Docstring for instance attribute spam."""

This doesn't work for parallel assignment

class Foo:
    def __init__(self):
        self.spam, self.bar, self.moo = 4, 5, 6
        """Docstring for instance attribute spam."""

How can I document variables in parallel assignment?

Neither one of those does anything at all. You just have random string literals in your method; they are not docstrings. If you want comments, use comments. — kindall, Jun 01 '14 at 16:27
These are for sphinx. It will look over these and generate doc for me. — XrXr, Jun 01 '14 at 16:29
sphinx seems very broken to me, then. in any case, if sphinx doesn't let you write docstrings for parallel assignments... maybe don't do parallel assignments? — kindall, Jun 01 '14 at 16:31

mzjn · Answer 1 · 2014-06-04T20:09:05.260

0

autoattribute is for a single attribute. Here is a way to do it, together with autoclass or automodule:

class Foo:
    """
    :ivar spam: Description of spam
    :ivar bar: Description of bar
    :ivar moo: Description of moo
    """

    def __init__(self):
        self.spam, self.bar, self.moo = 4, 5, 6

The output looks a bit different compared to what you get with autoattribute, but I quite like it.

edited Jun 04 '14 at 20:09

answered Jun 04 '14 at 14:42

mzjn

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This will look different than using autoattribute – XrXr Jun 04 '14 at 19:22

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 04 '14 at 19:35

I found that I can use Sephix markup inside the __init__ doc string block and make it look almost the same as using autoattribute.

class Foo:
    def __init__(self):
        """
        Something something

        .. py:attribute:: spam

           Something about spam

        .. py:attribute:: bar

           Something about br

        .. py:attribute:: moo

           Something about moo
        """
        self.spam, self.bar, self.moo = 4, 5, 6

This will look like http://xrxr.github.io/RapidPygame/levelmgr.html (interpreted and draw_list is done using this technique.) if autoclass_content is set to 'both' (If you pay attention, they are not in their right alphabetical place)

This works, but I still wonder if there is a better way.

autoattribute for parallel assignment of instance variables

2 Answers2