Creating the Sample Python Package

00:00 Create the Sample Python Package. To document a Python project, you first need a Python project. In this course, you’ll use a toy implementation of a calculator package that returns floating-point numbers.

00:15 If you already have a Python project for which you want to generate your documentation, then feel free to use that project instead. If that’s the case, you can skip this part and jump directly to the next section of the course.

00:28 Your example Python project will be small and consist only of one folder with two files in it, as seen on-screen. Create the package folder and the two files right inside your project folder.

00:47 Here’s how the two files are created on macOS,

00:59 and here’s how on Windows Terminal.

01:11 Then open calculations.py in your favorite code editor or IDE. Add the example code for some mathematical calculations that you’ll use as the basis for your documentation.

01:25 This code repackages some fundamental math operators into new functions that return the result as a floating-point number.

01:53 As seen on-screen, you’ll keep the second file, __init__.py, empty for now. For now, it’s here to help declare calculator as a package. Later on, you’ll add package-level docstrings in the file, which you’ll also pull into your auto-generated documentation.

02:09 In the next section of the course, you’ll add docstrings to your functions. This will set you up to allow you to generate documentation directly from these docstrings.