How to print Docstring of python function from inside the function itself?

Question

I want to print the docstring of a python function from inside the function itself. for eg.

def my_function(self):
  """Doc string for my function."""
  # print the Docstring here.

At the moment I am doing this directly after my_function has been defined.

print my_function.__doc__

But would rather let the function do this itself.

I have tried calling print self.__doc__ print self.my_function.__doc__ and print this.__doc__ inside my_function but this did not work.

Answer 1

If you're using Test class to make sure that doc string will appear in each test, then the efficient approach would be this.

def setup_method(self, method):
    print(getattr(self, method.__name__).__doc__)
        
     

This will print doc string of each method before it gets executed or you can past the same script on teardown_method to print it in the end of each test case.

Answer 2

There's quite a simple method for doing this that nobody has mentioned yet:

import inspect

def func():
    """Doc string"""
    print inspect.getdoc(func)

And this does what you want.

There's nothing fancy going on here. All that's happening is that by doing func.__doc__ in a function defers attribute resolution long enough to have looking up __doc__ on it work as you'd expect.

I use this with docopt for console script entry points.

Answer 3

As noted many times, using the function name is a dynamic lookup in the globals() directory. It only works in the module of the definition and only for a global function. If you want to find out the doc string of a member function, you would need to also lookup the path from the class name - which is quite cumbersome as these names can get quite long:

def foo():
    """ this is foo """
    doc = foo.__doc__
class Foo:
    def bar(self):
       """ this is bar """
       doc = Foo.bar.__doc__

is equivalent to

def foo():
    """ this is foo """
    doc = globals()["foo"].__doc__
class Foo:
    def bar(self):
       """ this is bar """
       doc = globals()["Foo"].bar.__doc__

If you want to look up the doc string of the caller, that won't work anyway as your print-helper might live in a completely different module with a completely different globals() dictionary. The only correct choice is to look into the stack frame - but Python does not give you the function object being executed, it only has a reference to the "f_code" code object. But keep going, as there is also a reference to the "f_globals" of that function. So you can write a function to get the caller's doc like this, and as a variation from it, you get your own doc string.

import inspect

def get_caller_doc():
    frame = inspect.currentframe().f_back.f_back
    for objref in frame.f_globals.values():
        if inspect.isfunction(objref):
            if objref.func_code == frame.f_code:
                return objref.__doc__
        elif inspect.isclass(objref):
            for name, member in inspect.getmembers(objref):
                if inspect.ismethod(member):
                    if member.im_func.func_code == frame.f_code:
                        return member.__doc__

and let's go to test it:

def print_doc():
   print get_caller_doc()

def foo():
   """ this is foo """
   print_doc()

class Foo:
    def bar(self):
       """ this is bar """
       print_doc()

def nothing():
    print_doc()

class Nothing:
    def nothing(self):
        print_doc()

foo()
Foo().bar()

nothing()
Nothing().nothing()

# and my doc

def get_my_doc():
    return get_caller_doc()

def print_my_doc():
    """ showing my doc """
    print get_my_doc()

print_my_doc()

results in this output

 this is foo 
 this is bar 
None
None
 showing my doc 

Actually, most people want their own doc string only to hand it down as an argument, but the called helper function can look it up all on its own. I'm using this in my unittest code where this is sometimes handy to fill some logs or to use the doc string as test data. That's the reason why the presented get_caller_doc() only looks for global test functions and member functions of a test class, but I guess that is enough for most people who want to find out about the doc string.

class FooTest(TestCase):
    def get_caller_doc(self):
        # as seen above
    def test_extra_stuff(self):
        """ testing extra stuff """
        self.createProject("A")
    def createProject(self, name):
        description = self.get_caller_doc()
        self.server.createProject(name, description)

To define a proper get_frame_doc(frame) with sys._getframe(1) is left to the reader().

Answer 4

def my_func():
    """Docstring goes here."""
    print my_func.__doc__

This will work as long as you don't change the object bound to the name my_func.

new_func_name = my_func
my_func = None

new_func_name()
# doesn't print anything because my_func is None and None has no docstring

Situations in which you'd do this are rather rare, but they do happen.

However, if you write a decorator like this:

def passmein(func):
    def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
        return func(func, *args, **kwargs)
    return wrapper

Now you can do this:

@passmein
def my_func(me):
    print me.__doc__

And this will ensure that your function gets a reference to itself (similar to self) as its first argument, so it can always get the docstring of the right function. If used on a method, the usual self becomes the second argument.

Answer 5

This should work (in my tests it does, also included output). You could probably use __doc__ instead of getdoc, but I like it, so thats just what i used. Also, this doesn't require you to know the names of the class/method/function.

Examples both for a class, a method and a function. Tell me if it's not what you were looking for :)

from inspect import *

class MySelfExplaningClass:
    """This is my class document string"""

    def __init__(self):
        print getdoc(self)

    def my_selfexplaining_method(self):
        """This is my method document string"""
        print getdoc(getattr(self, getframeinfo(currentframe()).function))


explain = MySelfExplaningClass()

# Output: This is my class document string

explain.my_selfexplaining_method()

# Output: This is my method document string

def my_selfexplaining_function():
    """This is my function document string"""
    print getdoc(globals()[getframeinfo(currentframe()).function])

my_selfexplaining_function()

# Output: This is my function document string

Answer 6

This works:

def my_function():
  """Docstring for my function"""
  #print the Docstring here.
  print my_function.__doc__

my_function()

in Python 2.7.1

This also works:

class MyClass(object):
    def my_function(self):
        """Docstring for my function"""
        #print the Docstring here, either way works.
        print MyClass.my_function.__doc__
        print self.my_function.__doc__


foo = MyClass()

foo.my_function()

This however, will not work on its own:

class MyClass(object):
    def my_function(self):
        """Docstring for my function"""
        #print the Docstring here.
        print my_function.__doc__


foo = MyClass()

foo.my_function()

NameError: global name 'my_function' is not defined

Answer 7

You've posed your question like a class method rather than a function. Namespaces are important here. For a function, print my_function.__doc__ is fine, as my_function is in the global namespace.

For a class method, then print self.my_method.__doc__ would be the way to go.

If you don't want to specify the name of the method, but rather pass a variable to it, you can use the built-in functions hasattr(object,attribute) and getattr(obj,attr), which do as they say, allowing you to pass variables in with strings being the name of a method. e.g.

class MyClass:
    def fn(self):
        """A docstring"""
        print self.fn.__doc__ 

def print_docstrings(object):
   for method in dir( object ):
       if method[:2] == '__':  # A protected function
           continue
       meth = getattr( object, method )
       if hasattr( meth , '__doc__' ):
           print getattr( meth , '__doc__' )

x = MyClass()
print_docstrings( x )

Answer 8

Try:

class MyClass():
    # ...
    def my_function(self):
        """Docstring for my function"""
        print MyClass.my_function.__doc__
        # ...

(*) There was a colon (:) missing after my_function()