Question

I have an OO hierarchy with docstrings that take as much maintenance as the code itself. E.g.,

class Swallow(object):
    def airspeed(self):
        """Returns the airspeed (unladen)"""
        raise NotImplementedError

class AfricanSwallow(Swallow):
    def airspeed(self):
        # whatever

Now, the problem is that AfricanSwallow.airspeed does not inherit the superclass method’s docstring. I know I can keep the docstring using the template method pattern, i.e.

class Swallow(object):
    def airspeed(self):
        """Returns the airspeed (unladen)"""
        return self._ask_arthur()

and implementing _ask_arthur in each subclass. However, I was wondering whether there’s another way to have docstrings be inherited, perhaps some decorator that I hadn’t discovered yet?

Answer 1

Write a function in a class-decorator style to do the copying for you. In Python2.5, you can apply it directly after the class is created. In later versions, you can apply with the @decorator notation.

Here’s a first cut at how to do it:

import types

def fix_docs(cls):
    for name, func in vars(cls).items():
        if isinstance(func, types.FunctionType) and not func.__doc__:
            print func, 'needs doc'
            for parent in cls.__bases__:
                parfunc = getattr(parent, name, None)
                if parfunc and getattr(parfunc, '__doc__', None):
                    func.__doc__ = parfunc.__doc__
                    break
    return cls


class Animal(object):
    def walk(self):
        'Walk like a duck'

class Dog(Animal):
    def walk(self):
        pass

Dog = fix_docs(Dog)
print Dog.walk.__doc__

In newer Python versions, the last part is even more simple and beautiful:

@fix_docs
class Dog(Animal):
    def walk(self):
        pass

This is a Pythonic technique that exactly matches the design of existing tools in the standard library. For example, the functools.total_ordering class decorator add missing rich comparison methods to classes. And for another example, the functools.wraps decorator copies metadata from one function to another.