Parsing function docstring in sphinx.autodoc format

openstack/rally's parse_docstrings() (permalink) take a function's docstring in reStructuredText (reST) format as an input and returns 4 values-short_description, long_description, params and returns

For e.g. if the function and its docstring is

def sample(self, task, deployment=None):
    """Start benchmark task.

    Implement sample function's long description.

    :param task: Path to the input task file.
    :param deployment: UUID or name of the deployment

    :returns: NIL
    """

Then parse_docstrings() function will return-

{ "short_description" : "Start benchmark task.",
  "long_description" : "Implement sample function's long description.",
  "params": [ { "name" : "task", "doc": "Path to the unput task file" },
              { "name" : "deployment", "doc" :  "UUID or name of the deployment" } ]
  "returns" : "NIL"
}

You can modify the above function as per your needs.

EDIT:

This question had two years without a response. See the accepted response for a better option.

---

OLD:

I ended up using regular expressions. The particular system used by Sphinx of nested Nodes, where each node type has to parse their children is not very useful for my purposes. If someone care, this is the regex I used:

param_regex = re.compile(
    '^:param (?P<type>\w+)? (?P<param>\w+): (?P<doc>.*)$'
)

pip install docstring-parser

support both ReST-style and Google-style docstrings,

see https://github.com/rr-/docstring_parser for details