sphinxcontrib-jsonglobaltoc

This Sphinx extension extends JSONHTMLBuilder from sphinxcontrib-serializinghtml to add a globaltoc key to each .fjson file produced. globaltoc will contain the HTML for the global table of contents for the entire set of documentation.

Getting It

You can get sphinxcontrib-jsonglobaltoc by using pip:

pip install sphinxcontrib-jsonglobaltoc

If you want to install it from source, grab the git repository from GitHub and run setup.py:

git clone git://github.com/caltechads/sphinxcontrib-jsonglobaltoc.git
cd sphinxcontrib-jsonglobaltoc
python setup.py install

Installing It

To enable sphinxcontrib-jsonglobaltoc in your Sphinx project, you need to add it to extensions list in your conf.py:

extensions = [
    ...
    'sphinx_json_globaltoc',
    ...
]

Configuring It

sphinxcontrib-jsonglobaltoc adds one configuration option to conf.py: globaltoc_collapse, a boolean with a default of True.

If True, do not add entries to the global table of contents for headings under the included page. If False, do add them.

If you have nested toctree blocks, you must set globaltoc_collapse to False if you want to see the entries from the nested toctree in your globaltoc.

If True

Using It

In your Sphinx docs folder, produce your jsonhtml output like so:

make json

Now if you open one of your .ftjson files and examine it, you should see a globaltoc key. For example:

>>> import json
>>> with open('build/json/index.fjson', encoding='utf-8') as index:
...     data = json.load(index)
>>> index['globaltoc']
'<ul>\n<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="page1/">Page 1</a></li>\n<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="page2/">Page 2</a></li>\n<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="page3/">Page 3</a></li>\n<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="page4/">Page 4</a></li>\n<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="page5/">Page 5</a></li>\n<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="api/">Developer Interface</a></li>\n</ul>\n'

Each .ftjson file's globaltoc key will contain the full global toc for the entire documentation set. We do this so that you can just look at the master_doc and extract its globaltoc key to get the sitemap for the entire set. Otherwise you'd have to walk through every page in the set and merge their individual HTML blobs into a whole. Not fun.

How to get nested toctrees to build properly into globaltoc

If you have a single .. toctree:: declaration in the root page of your documentation, then it's pretty difficult to make that not render properly into globaltoc.

But if you want nested toctrees, if you don't construct your pages properly, you'll get a mess in globaltoc.

Let's say that you are writing a book with pages for chapters, and pages for sections (in chapters) . You want the sections to appear as children to the chapters, and to not appear in the global table of contents as siblings of the chapters.

To do that in Sphinx, you have to make the root doc .. toctree:: that lists only the chapter pages, then have the chapter pages each have toctrees that list their own section documents.

An example

Here's index.rst, our root document:

=======
My Book
=======

.. toctree::
   :hidden:

   chapter1
   chapter2
   chapter3

Some introduction. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit,
sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad
minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea
commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit
esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat
non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Now for a chapter document, chapter1.rst, we list the section pages in its .. toctree:::

*********
Chapter 1
*********

.. toctree::
   :hidden:

   chapter1-section1
   chapter2-section2
   chapter2-section3

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor
incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis
nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu
fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in
culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Finally, a section document, chapter1-section1.rst:

Chapter 1, Section 1
====================

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor
incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis
nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu
fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in
culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

There are three important things to note here:

• You MUST get the heading levels right. The top level document heading must be a level 1 heading. In ReStructuredText that is # underline and overline. The chapter page must have a level 2 heading. In ReStructuredText that is * underline and overline. If you don't get the heading levels right, you end up with very odd nesting behavior in the resultant global table of contents.

• Put your .. toctree:: declaration directly under the page heading. On sub-pages, the toctree gets its level from the nearest preceding heading, not from the page heading. Thus to ensure that the sub-page toctree gets inserted into the global toc tree as the right level, you should put your .. toctree:: declaration right under the page heading.

• If all you're interested in your global table of contents are the page titles, be sure to do add :maxdepth: 1 to your .. toctree:: declaration. You will still have access to the local table of contents for the headings on the page in the toc key in the .fjson file.