This will be short, but it seems there's some difficulty doing this, so I thought I'd share.

The gist is, any time you reference a class or method in your own library, in the Python standard library, or in another third-party extension, you can provide a link directly to that project's documentation. This is pretty amazing and only requires a little bit of extra work from you. Here's how.

The Simplest Type of Link

Just create a link using the full import path of the class or attribute or method. Surround it with backticks like this:

Use :meth:`requests.Request.get` to make HTTP Get requests.

That link will show up in text as:

Use requests.Request.get to make HTTP Get requests.

There are a few different types of declarations you can use at the beginning of that phrase:

:attr:
:class:
:meth:
:exc:

The full list is here.

I Don't Want to Link the Whole Thing

To specify just the method/attribute name and not any of the modules or classes that precede it, use a squiggly, like this:

Use :meth:`~requests.Request.get` to make HTTP Get requests.

That link will show up in text as:

Use get to make HTTP Get requests.

I Want to Write My Own Text

This gets a little trickier, but still doable:

Use :meth:`the get() method <requests.Request.get>` to make HTTP Get requests.

That link will show up in text as:

Use the get() method to make HTTP Get requests.

I want to link to someone else's docs

In your docs/conf.py file, add 'sphinx.ext.intersphinx' to the end of the extensions list near the top of the file. Then, add the following anywhere in the file:

    # Add the "intersphinx" extension
    extensions = [
        'sphinx.ext.intersphinx',
    ]
    # Add mappings
    intersphinx_mapping = {
        'urllib3': ('http://urllib3.readthedocs.org/en/latest', None),
        'python': ('http://docs.python.org/3', None),
    }

You can then link to other projects' documentation and then reference it the same way you do your own projects, and Sphinx will magically make everything work.

I want to write the documentation inline in my source code and link to it

Great! I love this as well. Add the 'sphinx.ext.autodoc' extension, then write your documentation. There's a full guide to the inline syntax on the Sphinx website; confusingly, it is not listed on the autodoc page.

    # Add the "intersphinx" extension
    extensions = [
        'sphinx.ext.autodoc',
    ]

Hope that helps! Happy linking.

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