wip

doc/source/io.rst

@@ -4657,7 +4657,13 @@ Google BigQuery
    Starting in 0.20.0, pandas has split off Google BigQuery support into the
    separate package ``pandas-gbq``. You can ``pip install pandas-gbq`` to get it.
 
-   Documentation is now hosted `here <https://pandas-gbq.readthedocs.io/>`__
+The ``pandas-gbq`` package provides functionality to read/write from Google BigQuery.
+
+pandas integrates with this external package. if ``pandas-gbq`` is installed, you can
+use the pandas methods ``pd.read_gbq`` and ``DataFrame.to_gbq``, which will call the
+respective functions from ``pandas-gbq``.
+
+Full cocumentation can be found `here <https://pandas-gbq.readthedocs.io/>`__
 
 .. _io.stata:
 

pandas/core/frame.py

@@ -945,8 +945,7 @@ def to_gbq(self, destination_table, project_id, chunksize=10000,
     def _f():
         from pandas.io.gbq import _try_import
         return _try_import().to_gbq.__doc__
-    to_gbq = docstring_wrapper(
-        to_gbq, _f, default='the pandas_gbq package is not installed')
+    to_gbq = docstring_wrapper(to_gbq, _f)
 
     @classmethod
     def from_records(cls, data, index=None, exclude=None, columns=None,

pandas/io/gbq.py

@@ -11,8 +11,12 @@ def _try_import():
     except ImportError:
 
         # give a nice error message
-        raise ImportError("the pandas-gbq library is not installed\n"
-                          "you can install\n"
+        raise ImportError("Load data from Google BigQuery\n"
+                          "\n"
+                          "the pandas-gbq package is not installed\n"
+                          "see the docs: https://pandas-gbq.readthedocs.io\n"
+                          "\n"
+                          "you can install via:\n"
                           "pip install pandas-gbq\n")
 
     return pandas_gbq
@@ -32,8 +36,7 @@ def read_gbq(query, project_id=None, index_col=None, col_order=None,
 
 
 read_gbq = docstring_wrapper(read_gbq,
-                             lambda: _try_import().read_gbq.__doc__,
-                             default='the pandas_gbq package is not installed')
+                             lambda: _try_import().read_gbq.__doc__)
 
 
 def to_gbq(dataframe, destination_table, project_id, chunksize=10000,
@@ -46,5 +49,4 @@ def to_gbq(dataframe, destination_table, project_id, chunksize=10000,
 
 
 to_gbq = docstring_wrapper(to_gbq,
-                           lambda: _try_import().to_gbq.__doc__,
-                           default='the pandas_gbq package is not installed')
+                           lambda: _try_import().to_gbq.__doc__)

pandas/util/decorators.py

@@ -266,5 +266,6 @@ def __call__(self, func, *args, **kwargs):
     def __doc__(self):
         try:
             return self.creator()
-        except ImportError:
-            return self.default
+        except Exception as exc:
+            msg = self.default or str(exc)
+            return msg