Documentation

Building the docs

Dependencies for building the documentation for scanpy can be installed with pip install -e "scanpy[doc]"

To build the docs, enter the docs directory and run make html. After this process completes you can take a look at the docs by opening scanpy/docs/_build/html/index.html.

Your browser and Sphinx cache docs which have been built previously. Sometimes these caches are not invalidated when you’ve updated the docs. If docs are not updating the way you expect, first try “force reloading” your browser page – e.g. reload the page without using the cache. Next, if problems persist, clear the sphinx cache and try building them again (make clean from docs directory).

Note

If you’ve cloned the repository pre 1.8.0, you may need to be more thorough in cleaning. If you run into warnings try removing all untracked files in the docs directory.

Adding to the docs

For any user-visible changes, please make sure a note has been added to the release notes for the relevant version so we can credit you! These files are found in the docs/release-notes/ directory. We recommend waiting on this until your PR is close to done since this can often causes merge conflicts.

Once you’ve added a new function to the documentation, you’ll need to make sure there is a link somewhere in the documentation site pointing to it. This should be added to docs/api.md under a relevant heading.

For tutorials and more in depth examples, consider adding a notebook to scanpy-tutorials.

docstrings format

We use the numpydoc style for writing docstrings. We’d primarily suggest looking at existing docstrings for examples, but the napolean guide to numpy style docstrings is also a great source. If you’re unfamiliar with the reStructuredText (rst) markup format, Sphinx has a useful primer.

Some key points:

  • We have some custom sphinx extensions activated. When in doubt, try to copy the style of existing docstrings.

  • We autopopulate type information in docstrings when possible, so just add the type information to signatures.

  • When docs exist in the same file as code, line length restrictions still apply. In files which are just docs, go with a sentence per line (for easier git diffs).

  • Check that the docs look like what you expect them too! It’s easy to forget to add a reference to function, be sure it got added and looks right.

Look at sc.tl.louvain as an example for everything mentioned here.

Plots in docstrings

One of the most useful things you can include in a docstring is examples of how the function should be used. These are a great way to demonstrate intended usage and give users a template they can copy and modify. We’re able to include the plots produced by these snippets in the rendered docs using matplotlib’s plot directive. For examples of this, see the Examples sections of dotplot() or calculate_qc_metrics().

Note that anything in these sections will need to be run when the docs are built, so please keep them computationally light.

  • If you need computed features (e.g. an embedding, differential expression results) load data that has this precomputed.

  • Try to re-use datasets, this reduces the amount of data that needs to be downloaded to the CI server.

Params section

The Params abbreviation is a legit replacement for Parameters.

To document parameter types use type annotations on function parameters. These will automatically populate the docstrings on import, and when the documentation is built.

Use the python standard library types (defined in collections.abc and typing modules) for containers, e.g. Sequences (like list), Iterables (like set), and Mappings (like dict). Always specify what these contain, e.g. {'a': (1, 2)} → Mapping[str, Tuple[int, int]]. If you can’t use one of those, use a concrete class like AnnData. If your parameter only accepts an enumeration of strings, specify them like so: Literal['elem-1', 'elem-2'].

Returns section

There are three types of return sections – prose, tuple, and a mix of both.

  1. Prose is for simple cases.

  2. Tuple return sections are formatted like parameters. Other than in numpydoc, each tuple is first characterized by the identifier and not by its type. Provide type annotation in the function header.

  3. Mix of prose and tuple is relevant in complicated cases, e.g. when you want to describe that you added something as annotation to an `AnnData` object.

Examples

For simple cases, use prose as in normalize_total()

Returns
-------
Returns dictionary with normalized copies of `adata.X` and `adata.layers`
or updates `adata` with normalized versions of the original
`adata.X` and `adata.layers`, depending on `inplace`.

You can use the standard numpydoc way of populating it, e.g. as in calculate_qc_metrics(). If you use a plain type name here, a link will be created.

Returns
-------
one_identifier : some_module.some_type
    Description.
second_identifier : another.module.and_type
    Description 2.

Many functions also just modify parts of the passed AnnData object, like e.g. dpt(). You can then combine prose and lists to best describe what happens.

Returns
-------
Depending on `copy`, returns or updates `adata` with the following fields.

If `n_branchings==0`, no field `dpt_groups` will be written.

dpt_pseudotime : :class:`~pandas.Series` (`adata.obs`, dtype `float`)
    Array of dim (number of samples) that stores the pseudotime of each
    cell, that is, the DPT distance with respect to the root cell.
dpt_groups : :class:`pandas.Series` (`adata.obs`, dtype `category`)
    Array of dim (number of samples) that stores the subgroup id ('0',
    '1', ...) for each cell. The groups  typically correspond to
    'progenitor cells', 'undecided cells' or 'branches' of a process.