Have Sphinx replace docstring text

Question

I am documenting code in Sphinx that resembles this:

class ParentClass(object):
    
    def __init__(self):
        pass

    def generic_fun(self):
        """Call this function using /run/ParentClass/generic_fun()"""
        do_stuff()

class ChildClass(ParentClass):
    
    def specific_fun(self):
        """Call this function using /run/ChildClass/specific_fun()"""
        do_other_stuff()

I added the :inherited-members to the ChildClass documentation, so I have statements in there like "Call this function using /run/ParentClass/generic_fun()".

Is there a way I can put something in the docstrings like <class_name> that Sphinx will replace with the actual class that it's documenting?

I would like to have the code look like:

class ParentClass(object):
    
    def __init__(self):
        pass

    def generic_fun(self):
        """Call this function using /run/<class_name>/generic_fun()"""
        do_stuff()

So in the ChildClass section, the Sphinx documentation would read "(...) using /run/ChildClass/generic_fun()(...)" and the ParentClass section would read "(...) using /run/ParentClass/generic_fun()(...)"?

Ideally I'd like to have the documentation on the same page, so the replacement string would be different for different sections.

Answer 1

I figured out a way to do this while looking at something else.

There are functions autodoc will call before printing the message. I added this code to my conf.py file:

def get_class_name(full_module_name):
    """
    Pull out the class name from the full_module_name
    """
    #split the full_module_name by "."'s
    return full_module_name.split('.')[-1]

def process_docstring(app, what, name, obj, options, lines):
    classname = get_class_name(name)

    # loop through each line in the docstring and replace |class| with
    # the classname
    for i in xrange(len(lines)):
        lines[i] = lines[i].replace('|class|', classname)

def setup(app):
    app.connect('autodoc-process-docstring', process_docstring)

I want to use the | token, but they are reserved for global substitutions. I got around that by putting the following line my rst file (so the code substitutes |class| for |class|):

.. |class| replace:: `|class|`