python-docstring-markdown

A Python module and CLI that walks a Python package/directory and outputs a Markdown file from all docstrings in the package.

Tools like mkdocs and readthedocs are overkill for many small Python projects. This project exists to provide a simple way to generate Markdown documentation that can be stored alongside your code in Github.

Features

• Crawls the packages, modules, classes, functions, and methods using the ast module
• Auto-detects ReST, Google, Numpydoc-style and Epydoc docstrings using docstring-parser-fork
• Generates a table of contents with anchor links
• Tracks and documents module exports (__all__)
• Preserves module hierarchy in documentation
• Handles nested classes and functions

Installation

pip install python-docstring-markdown

Usage

Command Line

python -m python_docstring_markdown <package_dir> <output_file>

Arguments:

• package_dir: Path to your Python package directory
• output_file: Path where the Markdown documentation file will be saved

Example:

python -m python_docstring_markdown ./src/my_package docs/api.md

Python API

from python_docstring_markdown import crawl

# Generate documentation for a package
docs_content = crawl("./src/my_package")

# Save to a file
with open("docs/api.md", "w") as f:
    f.write(docs_content)

Documentation

See the DOCUMENTATION.md file for more information. It also serves as an example of how the documentation is generated.

Contributing

I welcome feedback and contributions!

License

CC-0 1.0 Universal. See the LICENSE file for more information.