Ansible Collection API Documentation Extractor

This package contains code for Ansible collection documentation extractor. Its main audience are Ansible collection maintainers that would like to publish API docs in the HTML form without having to manually copy the data already present in the module's metadata.

Quickstart

Documentation extractor is published on PyPI_ and we can install it using pip::

$ pip install ansible-doc-extractor # If we already have ansible installed $ pip install ansible-doc-extractor[ansible] # To also install ansible $ pip install ansible-doc-extractor[base] # To also install ansible-base $ pip install ansible-doc-extractor[core] # To also install ansible-core

If the previous command did not fail, we are ready to start extracting the documentation::

$ ansible-doc-extractor
/tmp/output-folder
~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/my/col/plugins/modules/*.py

This will extract the documentation from modules in my.col collection and place resulting rst files into /tmp/output-folder.

.. note:: Always extract documentation from installed collection. Documentation fragment loader fails to combine various parts of the documentation otherwise.

RST and Markdown support

By default ansible-doc-extractor will output files in .rst format using the built-in Jinja2 template for rst. Pass the --markdown flag to output files in markdown.

Custom template

ansible-doc-extractor supports a custom Jinja2 template file via --template. The following variables are sent to the template:

+--------------------+------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+ | Variable name | Type | Description | Module's documentation key | +====================+============+=====================================================================================+==================================================+ | short_description | str | Short description of a module. | short_description | +--------------------+------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+ | description | str / list | Longer description of a module, type depends on the module's description type. | description | +--------------------+------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+ | requirements | list | Requirements needed on the host that executes this module. | requirements | +--------------------+------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+ | options | dict | All module options, often called parameters or arguments. | options | +--------------------+------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+ | notes | list | Module's additional notes. | notes | +--------------------+------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+ | seealso | list | Details of any important information that doesn’t fit in one of the above sections. | seealso | +--------------------+------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+ | deprecated | str | Marks modules that will be removed in future releases | deprecated | +--------------------+------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+ | author | str / list | Author of the module, type can vary depending on how many authors module has. | author | +--------------------+------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+ | metadata | dict | This section provides information about the module | Refers to ANSIBLE_METADATA block in the module. | +--------------------+------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+ | examples | str | Code examples | Refers to EXAMPLES block in the module. | +--------------------+------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+ | returndocs | dict | This section documents the information the module returns. | Refers to RETURN block in the module. | +--------------------+------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+

The output files will use the same file extension as the custom template file.

You can always refer to the default Jinja2 template for rst_ and the default Jinja2 template for markdown_.

.. _PyPI: https://pypi.org/ .. _default Jinja2 template for rst: https://github.com/xlab-si/ansible-doc-extractor/blob/master/src/ansible_doc_extractor/templates/module.rst.j2 .. _default Jinja2 template for markdown: https://github.com/xlab-si/ansible-doc-extractor/blob/master/src/ansible_doc_extractor/templates/module.md.j2

Development setup

Getting development environment up and running is relatively simple::

$ python3 -m venv venv $ . venv/bin/activate (venv) $ pip install -e .

To test the extractor, we can run::

$ ansible-doc-extractor