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Command Line Usage

Once installed, pdocs exposes a simple command line utility for generating documentation websites.

To verify the tool is installed correctly, run pdocs from the command line and you should be given the available commands and the version of pdocs installed. To get help for any individual subcommand run pdocs SUBCOMMAND --help:

Serving Documentation Locally

Before you push documentation out publicly, it's a good idea to test it locally and ensure it looks as desired.

Running pdocs server YOUR_MODULES will generate a new static website for your project in a temporary directory and start a local server to allow you to browse it (at localhost:8080 by default).

This command takes an optional --port and --host argument if you wish to override the defaults.

Tip

Every module you pass in to pdocs must be installed or otherwise available on your PYTHON_PATH

Outputting HTML Locally

You can also output pdocs's generated documentation to a local directory. To do so run pdocs as_html YOUR_MODULES:

By default the generated documentation is outputted into a site subdirectory. If this directory exists for any reason, including previous documentation generation, the command will fail. Passing in --overwrite will delete any existing directory before output to ensure the command passes. You can change the output directory using -o DIRECTORY.

Outputting Markdown Locally

It is also straight-forward to output Markdown documentation for your project generated from your code via pdocs. To do so run pdocs as_markdown YOUR_MODULES:

By default the generated documentation is outputted into a docs subdirectory. If this directory exists for any reason, including previous documentation generation, the command will fail. Passing in --overwrite will delete any existing directory before output to ensure the command passes. You can change the output directory using -o DIRECTORY.