Displaying function documentation in PyDev

Question

I've gotten Pydev up and running, and almost all is working well. However I'm having some trouble with docstrings.

Let's say for instance I have a function such as the following:

def _get_logging_statement(self):
    """Returns an easy to read string which separates items in the log file cleanly"""
    result = "\n\n#============================================="
    result += "\n#   %-80s#"(self)
    result =+ "\n\n#============================================"
    return result

Assume I've overridden repr to format that string properly as well.

When I hover over this in Eclipse it shows me the full docstring as intended. However, the full implementation is also displayed below the doctsting.

Is there a way to only display the docstring?

Answer 1

Doesn't look like it currently. Googled around for this issue and the top result pointed me to this Pydev-users post:

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 5:45 AM, Janosch Peters wrote:

Hi,

when I hover over a function or class, I get a tooltip showing the whole definition of the function/class not only the docstring (as I would expect).

Is this expected behaviour? I think it would be more useful, if only the content of the docstring is shown.

It's currently expected. Please enter a feature request to make showing just the docstring an option.

Cheers,

Fabio

Looked around the Pydev bug/feature tracker and didn't find this specific issue entered. You might want to enter it in the Pydev feature request tracker and see if you can get help there.

Answer 2

I have submitted a feature request in the PyDev bug tracker, with ID 863.

In PyCharm when I hover onto a method name, I can see a popup showing only the docstring of every method, without implementation details. And, the tags like @param xx:, @rtype, etc., are parsed correctly and shown in a readable format in the popup, and different style like spinx/epytext/google/plain can be tweaked in settings so that it can recognize all formats.

I would like to suggest the same in PyDev: a popup which shows docstring with tags parsed, without implementation details, and if like javadoc, one can use <code>some code</code> to render it like in HTML, better.

Consider vote up to this ticket if you also want this. (And maybe vote up here, too)