mkdocs-autoapi is a MkDocs plugin that automatically generates API documentation from your project's source code. The idea for the plugin comes from this recipe in the MkDocs documentation.

• Python version 3.6 or higher
• MkDocs version 1.4.0 or higher
• mkdocstrings version 0.19.0 or higher

We recommend installing this package with pip:

pip install mkdocs-autoapi

To use the plugin, add the following configuration to your mkdocs.yml file:

plugins:
  - ... other plugin configuration ...
  - mkdocs-autoapi
  - mkdocstrings

By default, the plugin will use the current working directory as the project root. If you would like to use a different directory, you can specify a value in the autoapi_dir configuration option:

plugins:
  - ... other plugin configuration ...
  - mkdocs-autoapi:
      autoapi_dir: /path/to/autoapi/dir
  - mkdocstrings

You can ignore files and directories from the documentation by specifying a value in the autoapi_ignore configuration option. This option accepts a list of glob patterns. Note that the following patterns are always ignored:

• **/.venv/**/
• **/venv/**/

Likewise, the autoapi_file_patterns configuration option allows for control of which files are included in the API reference. This option also accepts a list of glob patterns which are evaluated (recursively) relative to autoapi_dir. By default, all files with .py and .pyi extensions are included.

As an example, suppose your project has the following structure:

project/
    docs/
        index.md
    module/
        __init__.py
        lorem.py
        ipsum.py
        dolor.py
    second_module/
        __init__.py
        lorem.py
        sit.py
        amet.py
    venv/
    mkdocs.yml
    README.md

To ignore all files named lorem.py, you can add the following configuration to your mkdocs.yml file:

plugins:
  - ... other plugin configuration ...
  - mkdocs-autoapi:
      autoapi_ignore:
        - "**/lorem.py"
      autoapi_file_patterns:
        - "*.py"
  - mkdocstrings

To disable API documentation generation, set the autoapi_generate_api_docs configuration option to False. This is useful when transitioning to manual documentation or when the API documentation is not needed.

The inclusion of API documentation in the navigation can be controlled via the configuration option autoapi_add_nav_entry. This option accepts either a boolean value or a string. Behavior is as follows:

• If True, then a section named "API Reference" will be added to the end of the navigation.
• If False, then no section for the API documentation will be added. In this case, a manual link to the API documentation can be added to the navigation.
• If a string, then a section with the specified name will be added to the end of the navigation.

Example: To include the API documentation in the navigation under the section "Reference", add the following configuration to mkdocs.yml:

plugins:
  - ... other plugin configuration ...
  - mkdocs-autoapi:
      autoapi_add_nav_entry: Reference
  - mkdocstrings

Example: To disable the automatic addition of the API documentation to the navigation and add a manual link to the API documentation, add the following configuration to mkdocs.yml:

nav:
  - ... other navigation configuration ...
  - API: autoapi/ # target should be `autoapi_root`
  - ... other navigation configuration ...

More information on navigation configuration can be found in the MkDocs User Guide.

Again, consider the following project structure:

project/
    docs/
        index.md
    module/
        __init__.py
        lorem.py
        ipsum.py
        dolor.py
    second_module/
        __init__.py
        lorem.py
        sit.py
        amet.py
    venv/
    mkdocs.yml
    README.md

A full mkdocs.yml for the project might look like this:

site_name: Project

nav:
  - Home: index.md
  - API Reference: autoapi/

plugins:
  - mkdocs-autoapi
  - mkdocstrings

theme:
  name: readthedocs

More information MkDocs configuration through mkdocs.yml can be found in the MkDocs User Guide.

Contributions are always welcome! Please submit a pull request or open an issue to get started.

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more information.