Question

Using SWIG to generate a Python interface to a C++ application, is there any way to have it comment the functions in the generated .py file? I’m actually pulling in an entire .h file into the .i file, but for a small example:

%module example

bool do_something_interesting(int number, string text);

swig -python example.i Generates:

...
def do_something_interesting(*args):
  return _example.do_something_interesting(*args)
do_something_interesting = _example.do_something_interesting

Ideally, I would like it to automatically add a comment with the original method signature

#bool do_something_interesting(int number, string text)
def do_something_interesting(*args):
  return _example.do_something_interesting(*args)
do_something_interesting = _example.do_something_interesting

But I would be perfectly amenable to writing my own comment somewhere (particularly if the comment could somehow be in the .h file). I thought %pythonprepend might be a possible solution, but it inserts code inside the function definition rather than before it.

EDIT: Here’s what I came up with in the .h file. Not the prettiest thing ever but it’ll do:

#ifdef SWIG
   %pythonprepend do_something_interesting(int, string) %{
    """Do some interesting thing

    number:Int -- a number
    text:String -- some text

    """
  %}
#endif
bool do_something_interesting(int number, string text);

Answer 1

Look at the docstring feature in SWIG for Python.
Probably putting the following line in your .i file

%feature("autodoc", "1")

would do what you want (see http://www.swig.org/Doc2.0/Python.html#Python_nn65 for more options)