How do I build sphinx (readthedocs) documentation for Google App Engine projects?

Question

I have a Google App Engine project named gaend . I am attempting to build better documentation for it using readthedocs . I have used

> sphinx-quickstart

to build my base sphinx project. Followed by

> sphinx-apidoc -o . ../gaend

to generate a API list of the project. I then run

sphinx-autobuild . _build/html

+--------- manually triggered build ---------------------------------------------
| Running Sphinx v1.5.2
| loading pickled environment... done
| building [mo]: targets for 0 po files that are out of date
| building [html]: targets for 0 source files that are out of date
| updating environment: 0 added, 1 changed, 0 removed
| reading sources... [100%] gaend
/Users/stephen/gaend/docs/gaend.rst:10: WARNING: autodoc: failed to import module u'gaend.bigquery'; the following exception was raised:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Users/stephen/.virtualenvs/gaend/lib/python2.7/site-packages/sphinx/ext/autodoc.py", line 551, in import_object
__import__(self.modname)
File "/Users/stephen/gaend/gaend/bigquery.py", line 1, in <module>
   from google.cloud import bigquery
ImportError: No module named google.cloud
...
ImportError: No module named google.appengine.ext

I recognize that the problem is that it does not have access to the Google Cloud SDK. I have had similar issues with running my unit test, and the work around to doing this is in runner.py . However, this relies on having the Google Cloud SDK (with the Python Google App Engine module installed) somewhere on my system. How am I going to get the Google Cloud SDK (and Python GAE) on the readthedocs server that build my documentation?

Answer 1

I was the same problem, I don't remember where I found the solution and maybe don't fix your problem but I solved mine adding the path of google_appengine folder and google_appengine/lib/yam/lib folder in conf.py file in your source folder inside of Sphinx doc folder, something like this:

In conf.py :

sys.path.insert(0, os.path.abspath('../../'))
sys.path.insert(1, '<your local full path>/google_appengine')
sys.path.insert(1, '<your local full path>/google_appengine/lib/yaml/lib')

if 'google' in sys.modules:
    del sys.modules['google']

I know that it would be better with relative path but it worked for me.

That Sphinx need run the program that you are documenting is something that I don't understand fine but anyway, is a good tool.

Answer 2

I just solved the same issue. There are not many questions asking about Sphinx + GAE, so I'm posting the conf.py code that got it working for me in the hopes it helps others:

import os
import sys
project_id = 'gae-project-id'
# environment variables that several utils are assuming are present
if not os.environ.get('SERVER_SOFTWARE', None):
    os.environ['SERVER_SOFTWARE'] = 'Development-'+project_id
if not os.environ.get('APPLICATION_ID', None):
    os.environ['APPLICATION_ID'] = 'dev~'+project_id
# project root
sys.path.insert(0, os.path.dirname(__file__))
# downloaded third party libs
sys.path.insert(0, os.path.dirname(__file__)+"/lib")
# path to gae sdk
sdk_path = os.path.join('~/google-cloud-sdk', 'platform/google_appengine')
try:
    import google
    google.__path__.append("{0}/google".format(sdk_path))
except ImportError:
    pass
sys.path.insert(0, os.path.expanduser(sdk_path))
import dev_appserver
dev_appserver.fix_sys_path()