Using datatemplate

The datatemplate directive is the interface between the data source and the rendering template.

Directives

.. datatemplate:csv:: source-path

Load file at source-path (relative to the documentation build directory) via csv.reader() or csv.DictReader depending on header and render using template given in directive body.

:template: template name, optional

The name of a template file on the Sphinx template search path. Overrides directive body.

:encoding: optional, defaults to ``utf-8-sig``

The text encoding that will be used to read the source file. See Standard Encodings

:header: flag, optional

Set to use csv.DictReader for reading the file. If not set csv.reader() is used.

:dialect: optional

Set to select a specific csv.Dialect. Set to auto, to try autodetection. If not set the default dialect is used.

.. datatemplate:dbm:: source-path::

Load DB at source-path (relative to the documentation build directory) via dbm.open() and render using template given in directive body.

:template: template name, optional

The name of a template file on the Sphinx template search path. Overrides directive body.

.. datatemplate:import-module:: module-name

Load module module-name (must be importable in conf.py) via importlib.import_module() and render using template given in directive body.

:template: template name, optional

The name of a template file on the Sphinx template search path. Overrides directive body.

.. datatemplate:json:: source-path

Load file at source-path (relative to the documentation build directory) via json.load() and render using template given in directive body.

:template: template name, optional

The name of a template file on the Sphinx template search path. Overrides directive body.

:encoding: optional, defaults to ``utf-8-sig``

The text encoding that will be used to read the source file. See Standard Encodings

.. datatemplate:nodata::

Load None as data and render using template given in directive body.

:template: template name, optional

The name of a template file on the Sphinx template search path. Overrides directive body.

.. datatemplate:xml:: source-path

Load file at source-path (relative to the documentation build directory) via xml.etree.ElementTree.parse() (actually using defusedxml) and render using template given in directive body.

:template: template name, optional

The name of a template file on the Sphinx template search path. Overrides directive body.

.. datatemplate:yaml:: source-path

Load file at source-path (relative to the documentation build directory) via PyYAML (yaml.safe_load()) and render using template given in directive body.

:template: template name, optional

The name of a template file on the Sphinx template search path. Overrides directive body.

:encoding: optional, defaults to ``utf-8-sig``

The text encoding that will be used to read the source file. See Standard Encodings

:multiple-documents: flag, optional

Set to read multiple documents from the file into a list

Template Files

The datatemplate directive uses Sphinx’s templates_path configuration setting to search for template files.

Template Context

When a datatemplate directive is processed, the data from the source is passed to the template through its context so that the symbol data is available as a global variable.

Important

The data is loaded from the source and passed directly to the template. No pre-processing is done on the data, so the template needs to handle aspects like None values and fields that have values that may interfere with parsing reStructuredText.

The application configuration for a project will be passed to the template as the symbol config. This can be used, for example, to access HTML context via config.html_context. Refer to the Inline Sample for an example.

The Sphinx build environment for a project will be passed to the template as the symbol env. This can be used to access all of the information that Sphinx has about the current build, including settings, and document names. Refer to the No Data Sample for an example.

Template Helpers

These helper functions are exposed using their short name (without the module prefix) in the template context.

sphinxcontrib.datatemplates.helpers.escape_rst(s)

Escape string for inclusion in RST documents.

See https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#escaping-mechanism

Parameters:

s – String for escaping

sphinxcontrib.datatemplates.helpers.escape_rst_url(s)

Escape string for inclusion in URLs in RST documents.

See https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#escaping-mechanism

Parameters:

s – String for escaping

sphinxcontrib.datatemplates.helpers.make_list_table(headers, data, title='', columns=None)

Build a list-table directive.

Parameters:

  • headers – List of header values.

  • data – Iterable of row data, yielding lists or tuples with rows.

  • title – Optional text to show as the table title.

  • columns – Optional widths for the columns.

sphinxcontrib.datatemplates.helpers.make_list_table_from_mappings(headers, data, title, columns=None)

Build a list-table directive.

Parameters:

  • headers – List of tuples containing header title and key value.

  • data – Iterable of row data, yielding mappings with rows.

  • title – Optional text to show as the table title.

  • columns – Optional widths for the columns.