
Available builders
******************

These are the built-in Sphinx builders.  More builders can be added by
*extensions*.

The builder's "name" must be given to the **-b** command-line option
of **sphinx-build** to select a builder.

class class sphinx.builders.html.StandaloneHTMLBuilder

   This is the standard HTML builder.  Its output is a directory with
   HTML files, complete with style sheets and optionally the reST
   sources.  There are quite a few configuration values that customize
   the output of this builder, see the chapter *Options for HTML
   output* for details.

   Its name is ``html``.

class class sphinx.builders.html.DirectoryHTMLBuilder

   This is a subclass of the standard HTML builder.  Its output is a
   directory with HTML files, where each file is called ``index.html``
   and placed in a subdirectory named like its page name.  For
   example, the document ``markup/rest.rst`` will not result in an
   output file ``markup/rest.html``, but ``markup/rest/index.html``.
   When generating links between pages, the ``index.html`` is omitted,
   so that the URL would look like ``markup/rest/``.

   Its name is ``dirhtml``.

   New in version 0.6.

class class sphinx.builders.html.SingleFileHTMLBuilder

   This is an HTML builder that combines the whole project in one
   output file. (Obviously this only works with smaller projects.)
   The file is named like the master document.  No indices will be
   generated.

   Its name is ``singlehtml``.

   New in version 1.0.

class class sphinx.builders.htmlhelp.HTMLHelpBuilder

   This builder produces the same output as the standalone HTML
   builder, but also generates HTML Help support files that allow the
   Microsoft HTML Help Workshop to compile them into a CHM file.

   Its name is ``htmlhelp``.

class class sphinx.builders.qthelp.QtHelpBuilder

   This builder produces the same output as the standalone HTML
   builder, but also generates Qt help collection support files that
   allow the Qt collection generator to compile them.

   Its name is ``qthelp``.

class class sphinx.builders.devhelp.DevhelpBuilder

   This builder produces the same output as the standalone HTML
   builder, but also generates GNOME Devhelp support file that allows
   the GNOME Devhelp reader to view them.

   Its name is ``devhelp``.

class class sphinx.builders.epub.EpubBuilder

   This builder produces the same output as the standalone HTML
   builder, but also generates an *epub* file for ebook readers.  See
   *Epub info* for details about it.  For definition of the epub
   format, have a look at http://www.idpf.org/specs.htm or
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB.

   Some ebook readers do not show the link targets of references.
   Therefore this builder adds the targets after the link when
   necessary.  The display of the URLs can be customized by adding CSS
   rules for the class ``link-target``.

   Its name is ``epub``.

class class sphinx.builders.latex.LaTeXBuilder

   This builder produces a bunch of LaTeX files in the output
   directory.  You have to specify which documents are to be included
   in which LaTeX files via the ``latex_documents`` configuration
   value.  There are a few configuration values that customize the
   output of this builder, see the chapter *Options for LaTeX output*
   for details.

   Note: The produced LaTeX file uses several LaTeX packages that may not
     be present in a "minimal" TeX distribution installation.  For
     TeXLive, the following packages need to be installed:

     * latex-recommended

     * latex-extra

     * fonts-recommended

   Its name is ``latex``.

Note that a direct PDF builder using ReportLab is available in rst2pdf
version 0.12 or greater.  You need to add ``'rst2pdf.pdfbuilder'`` to
your ``extensions`` to enable it, its name is ``pdf``.  Refer to the
rst2pdf manual for details.

class class sphinx.builders.text.TextBuilder

   This builder produces a text file for each reST file -- this is
   almost the same as the reST source, but with much of the markup
   stripped for better readability.

   Its name is ``text``.

   New in version 0.4.

class class sphinx.builders.manpage.ManualPageBuilder

   This builder produces manual pages in the groff format.  You have
   to specify which documents are to be included in which manual pages
   via the ``man_pages`` configuration value.

   Its name is ``man``.

   Note: This builder requires the docutils manual page writer, which is
     only available as of docutils 0.6.

   New in version 1.0.

class class sphinx.builders.html.SerializingHTMLBuilder

   This builder uses a module that implements the Python serialization
   API (*pickle*, *simplejson*, *phpserialize*, and others) to dump
   the generated HTML documentation.  The pickle builder is a subclass
   of it.

   A concrete subclass of this builder serializing to the PHP
   serialization format could look like this:

      import phpserialize

      class PHPSerializedBuilder(SerializingHTMLBuilder):
          name = 'phpserialized'
          implementation = phpserialize
          out_suffix = '.file.phpdump'
          globalcontext_filename = 'globalcontext.phpdump'
          searchindex_filename = 'searchindex.phpdump'

   implementation

      A module that implements *dump()*, *load()*, *dumps()* and
      *loads()* functions that conform to the functions with the same
      names from the pickle module.  Known modules implementing this
      interface are *simplejson* (or *json* in Python 2.6),
      *phpserialize*, *plistlib*, and others.

   out_suffix

      The suffix for all regular files.

   globalcontext_filename

      The filename for the file that contains the "global context".
      This is a dict with some general configuration values such as
      the name of the project.

   searchindex_filename

      The filename for the search index Sphinx generates.

   See *Serialization builder details* for details about the output
   format.

   New in version 0.5.

class class sphinx.builders.html.PickleHTMLBuilder

   This builder produces a directory with pickle files containing
   mostly HTML fragments and TOC information, for use of a web
   application (or custom postprocessing tool) that doesn't use the
   standard HTML templates.

   See *Serialization builder details* for details about the output
   format.

   Its name is ``pickle``.  (The old name ``web`` still works as
   well.)

   The file suffix is ``.fpickle``.  The global context is called
   ``globalcontext.pickle``, the search index ``searchindex.pickle``.

class class sphinx.builders.html.JSONHTMLBuilder

   This builder produces a directory with JSON files containing mostly
   HTML fragments and TOC information, for use of a web application
   (or custom postprocessing tool) that doesn't use the standard HTML
   templates.

   See *Serialization builder details* for details about the output
   format.

   Its name is ``json``.

   The file suffix is ``.fjson``.  The global context is called
   ``globalcontext.json``, the search index ``searchindex.json``.

   New in version 0.5.

class class sphinx.builders.changes.ChangesBuilder

   This builder produces an HTML overview of all ``versionadded``,
   ``versionchanged`` and ``deprecated`` directives for the current
   ``version``.  This is useful to generate a ChangeLog file, for
   example.

   Its name is ``changes``.

class class sphinx.builders.linkcheck.CheckExternalLinksBuilder

   This builder scans all documents for external links, tries to open
   them with ``urllib2``, and writes an overview which ones are broken
   and redirected to standard output and to ``output.txt`` in the
   output directory.

   Its name is ``linkcheck``.

Built-in Sphinx extensions that offer more builders are:

* ``doctest``

* ``coverage``


Serialization builder details
=============================

All serialization builders outputs one file per source file and a few
special files.  They also copy the reST source files in the directory
``_sources`` under the output directory.

The ``PickleHTMLBuilder`` is a builtin subclass that implements the
pickle serialization interface.

The files per source file have the extensions of ``out_suffix``, and
are arranged in directories just as the source files are.  They
unserialize to a dictionary (or dictionary like structure) with these
keys:

``body``
   The HTML "body" (that is, the HTML rendering of the source file),
   as rendered by the HTML translator.

``title``
   The title of the document, as HTML (may contain markup).

``toc``
   The table of contents for the file, rendered as an HTML ``<ul>``.

``display_toc``
   A boolean that is ``True`` if the ``toc`` contains more than one
   entry.

``current_page_name``
   The document name of the current file.

``parents``, ``prev`` and ``next``
   Information about related chapters in the TOC tree.  Each relation
   is a dictionary with the keys ``link`` (HREF for the relation) and
   ``title`` (title of the related document, as HTML).  ``parents`` is
   a list of relations, while ``prev`` and ``next`` are a single
   relation.

``sourcename``
   The name of the source file under ``_sources``.

The special files are located in the root output directory.  They are:

``SerializingHTMLBuilder.globalcontext_filename``
   A pickled dict with these keys:

   ``project``, ``copyright``, ``release``, ``version``
      The same values as given in the configuration file.

   ``style``
      ``html_style``.

   ``last_updated``
      Date of last build.

   ``builder``
      Name of the used builder, in the case of pickles this is always
      ``'pickle'``.

   ``titles``
      A dictionary of all documents' titles, as HTML strings.

``SerializingHTMLBuilder.searchindex_filename``
   An index that can be used for searching the documentation.  It is a
   pickled list with these entries:

   * A list of indexed docnames.

   * A list of document titles, as HTML strings, in the same order as
     the first list.

   * A dict mapping word roots (processed by an English-language
     stemmer) to a list of integers, which are indices into the first
     list.

``environment.pickle``
   The build environment.  This is always a pickle file, independent
   of the builder and a copy of the environment that was used when the
   builder was started.

   Todo: Document common members.

   Unlike the other pickle files this pickle file requires that the
   ``sphinx`` package is available on unpickling.
