rst2db.py

A number of tools for reStructuredText (reST) and Sphinx, including:

• A reST to DocBook converter (rst2db) with an included Sphinx builder (abstrys.spinx_ext.docbook_builder).
• A reST to Markdown converter (rst2md) with an included Sphinx builder (abstrys.sphinx_ext.markdown_builder).

Prerequisites

Before installing rst2db, you'll need the following prerequisites:

• libxml2 and headers (libxml2 and libxml2-dev)
• Python bindings for libxml2 (python-lxml or python3-lxml)
• libxslt1 headers (libxslt1-dev)
• Python headers (python-dev or python3-dev)

You can install these on Ubuntu / Debian by running:

sudo apt-get install libxml2 libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev

and one of the following, depending on your Python version:

sudo apt-get install python3-lxml python3-dev

sudo apt-get install python-lxml python-dev

Using the command-line utilities

rst2db <filename> [-e root_element] [-o output_file] [-t template_file]

rst2md <filename> [-o output_file]

Only the filename to process is required. All other settings are optional.

Settings:

-e root_element	set the root element of the resulting docbook file. If this is not specified, then 'section' will be used.
-o output_file	set the output filename to write. If this is not specified, then output will be sent to stdout.
-t template_file	set a template file to use to dress the output. You must have Jinja2 installed to use this feature.

DocBook template files

When using a DocBook template file, use {{data.root_element}} and {{data.contents}} to represent the root element (chapter, section, etc.) and {{data.contents}} to represent the transformed contents of your .rst source.

For example, you could use a template that looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE {{data.root_element}} PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN"
          "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd">
<{{data.root_element}}>
    {{data.contents}}
</{{data.root_element}}>

A template is only necessary if you want to customize the output. A standard DocBook XML header will be included in each output file by default.

Using the Sphinx builders

Docbook output

To build DocBook output with Sphinx, add abstrys.sphinx_ext.docbook_builder to the extensions list in conf.py:

extensions = [
   ... other extensions here ...
   abstrys.sphinx_ext.docbook_builder
   ]

There are two configurable parameters for conf.py that correspond to rst2db.py parameters:

docbook_template_file	template file that will be used to position the document parts. This should be a valid DocBook .xml file that contains Requires Jinja2 to be installed if specified.
docbook_default_root_element	default root element for a file-level document. Default is 'section'.

For example:

docbook_template_file = 'dbtemplate.xml'
docbook_default_root_element = chapter

Then, build your project using sphinx-build with the -b docbook option:

sphinx-build source output -b docbook

Markdown output

To build Markdown output with Sphinx, add abstrys.sphinx_ext.docbook_builder to the extensions list in conf.py:

extensions = [
   ... other extensions here ...
   abstrys.sphinx_ext.markdown_builder
   ]

There aren't any configurable options yet. Just build your project with -b markdown as the output type:

sphinx-build source output -b markdown

License

This software is provided under the BSD 3-Clause license. See the LICENSE file for more details.

For more information

Contact: Eron Hennessey <eron@abstrys.com>