Trac API Documentation

The code is the authoritative source of documentation, and most classes and methods have a corresponding Python "doc string". How the documentation that has been added to the code can be viewed and generated is explained on this page.

View the documentation

Besides the TracBrowser and looking directly at the code, you can also read the generated ​API documentation, which shows the public API in a nicely organized and rendered way:

Line of development	Sphinx documentation (apidoc)		Epydoc (apiref)
	HTML	PDF
Trac 1.1.x (trunk)	​trunk	​trunk	​trunk
Trac 1.0	​1.0 | ​1.0-stable	​1.0 | ​1.0-stable	​1.0 | ​1.0-stable
Trac 0.12			​0.12 | ​0.12.1 | ​0.12.2 | ​0.12.3 | ​0.12.4 | ​0.12-stable
Trac 0.11			​0.11.7

In italic: corresponds to the latest revision on the branch.

The Sphinx documentation will take precedence, because epydoc is no longer maintained. For now, the two sets of documentation are complementary.

apidoc

Semi-automatic API documentation, generated using ​Sphinx.
Sphinx offers fine-grained control over the generated documentation and the order in which it appears. We've also written additional explanations and examples not present in the code. Therefore, this documentation reads better than the purely auto-generated manual. The downside is that there is no full coverage of the API yet. Apidoc has been introduced in Trac 1.0.

apiref

Full API reference, generated using ​epydoc.
With epydoc, the entirety of the API is covered, but there is less control over the generated output, as it only shows what is present in the source code. The documentation has a more auto-generated feel.

Generating the documentation

Sphinx — make apidoc

Once you have installed sphinx, go to your Trac 1.0-stable or trunk checkout and do:

$ make apidoc-html

This will generate the Sphinx documentation in ./build/doc/html, start with the index.html page.

You can also generate a PDF document using ​rst2pdf:

$ make apidoc-pdf

This will generate the ./build/doc/pdf/trac_dev.pdf file.

Alternatively you can invoke make apidoc to get both.

Sphinx is installed as easy_install sphinx, which will get you the appropriate dependencies, such as docutils and jinja2.

Same goes for easy_install rst2pdf.

Verifying the completeness of the documentation — checkapidoc.py

Note that we also have a help script for checking whether a documented .rst module below source:trunk/doc/api contains all the symbols that need to be documented.

For example:

$ PYTHONPATH=. python doc/utils/checkapidoc.py trac_wiki_api

will check if all public and documented symbols from source:trunk/trac/wiki/api.py​ are referenced in source:trunk/doc/api/trac_wiki_api.rst​.

$ PYTHONPATH=. python doc/utils/checkapidoc.py trac_wiki_api
Warning: trac.wiki.api doesn't define __all__, using exported symbols.
 * ..   autofunction :: validate_page_name

Explaining the output:

• Warning: trac.wiki.api doesn't define __all__, using exported symbols. means that in the absence of an explicit list of public symbols, we try to guess what needs to be documented by looking at the globals of that module which have a docstring.

• * .. autofunction :: validate_page_name corresponds to a function in api.py​ which has a docstring but is not yet present in trac_wiki_api.rst​.

Note that when __all__ is specified, we also consider that listed symbols which don't have a docstring yet should also be documented.

A symbol can be explicitly declared to be unwanted in the Sphinx documentation by listing it in the global __no_apidoc__ property of its defining module.

There's also a verbose mode -v for showing all the symbols found:

$ PYTHONPATH=. python doc/utils/checkapidoc.py trac_wiki_api -v
== Checking trac_wiki_api.rst ...
Warning: trac.wiki.api doesn't define __all__, using exported symbols.
 - OK      autoclass :: IWikiChangeListener
 - OK      autoclass :: IWikiMacroProvider
 - OK      autoclass :: IWikiPageManipulator
 - OK      autoclass :: IWikiSyntaxProvider
 - OK      autoclass :: WikiSystem
 - OK   autofunction :: parse_args
 * ..   autofunction :: validate_page_name

Epydoc — make apiref

Once you have installed epydoc, go to your Trac trunk checkout and do:

$ make apiref

This will generate the epydoc documentation in ./build/doc/epydoc, start with the index.html page.

Note that while installing epydoc with easy_install might work on Linux (not tested), on Windows you should rather download and execute the Windows installer.