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Older documentation projects included the Python docstrings for the API implementation as the source of the API documentation. These projects use the Sphinx autodoc extension to include Python docstring content in RST documentation. Autodoc requires that the RST files be in the same repository as the Python API code and it requires that the documentation build process can import all of the Python modules that are used in the API implementation. In particular, importing Importing the Python modules has caused problems during documentation publishing, and in more recent projects, the documentation team has stopped using the autodoc extension.
The EdX XBlock API Guide includes information about the Python API that you can use to build an XBlock component. The XBlock API is not a REST web services API and its documentation is focused on the Python API code.