.. _builders:

Available builders
==================

.. module:: sphinx.builders
   :synopsis: Available built-in builder classes.

These are the built-in Sphinx builders.  More builders can be added by
:ref:`extensions <extensions>`.

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


.. module:: sphinx.builders.html
.. class:: 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 :ref:`html-options` for details.

   Its name is ``html``.

.. class:: 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``.

   .. versionadded:: 0.6

.. module:: sphinx.builders.htmlhelp
.. class:: 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``.

.. module:: sphinx.builders.qthelp
.. class:: 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``.

.. module:: sphinx.builders.devhelp
.. class:: DevhelpBuilder

   This builder produces the same output as the standalone HTML builder, but
   also generates `GNOME Devhelp <http://live.gnome.org/devhelp>`__ 
   support file that allows the GNOME Devhelp reader to view them.

   Its name is ``devhelp``.

.. module:: sphinx.builders.latex
.. class:: 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 :confval:`latex_documents` configuration value.  There are a few
   configuration values that customize the output of this builder, see the
   chapter :ref:`latex-options` 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``.

.. module:: sphinx.builders.text
.. class:: 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``.

   .. versionadded:: 0.4

.. currentmodule:: sphinx.builders.html
.. class:: 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 concreate 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'

   .. _PHP serialization: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/phpserialize

   .. attribute:: 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.

   .. attribute:: out_suffix

      The suffix for all regular files.

   .. attribute:: 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.

   .. attribute:: searchindex_filename

      The filename for the search index Sphinx generates.


   See :ref:`serialization-details` for details about the output format.

   .. versionadded:: 0.5

.. class:: 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 :ref:`serialization-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:: 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 :ref:`serialization-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``.

   .. versionadded:: 0.5

.. module:: sphinx.builders.changes
.. class:: ChangesBuilder

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

   Its name is ``changes``.

.. module:: sphinx.builders.linkcheck
.. class:: CheckExternalLinksBuilder

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

   Its name is ``linkcheck``.


Built-in Sphinx extensions that offer more builders are:

* :mod:`~sphinx.ext.doctest`
* :mod:`~sphinx.ext.coverage`


.. _serialization-details:

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

The files per source file have the extensions of
:attr:`~SerializingHTMLBuilder.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:

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

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

   ``style``, ``use_modindex``
      :confval:`html_style` and :confval:`html_use_modindex`, respectively.

   ``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.

:attr:`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.  (XXX: document common members)

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