single py file for convert rst to html

Question

I have a blog written in reStructuredText which I currently have to manually convert to HTML when I make a new post.

I'm writing a new blog system using Google App Engine and need a simple way of converting rst to HTML.

I don't want to use docutils because it is too big and complex. Is there a simpler (ideally single python file) way I can do this?

Solution 1

Have a look at the instructions for hacking docutils. You don't need the whole docutils to produce a html from rst, but you do need a reader, parser, transformer and writer. With some effort you could combine all of these to a single file from the existing docutils files.

Solution 2

docutils is a library that you can install. It also installs front end tools to convert from rest to various formats including html.

• http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/tools.html#rst2html-py

This is a stand alone tool that can be used.

Most converters will exploit the docutils library for this.

Solution 3

The Sphinx documentation generator Python library includes many restructured text (RST) command-line converters.

Install Sphinx:

$ pip install sphinx

Then use one of the many rst2*.py helpers:

$ rst2html.py in_file.rst out_file.html

Solution 4

Well you could try it with the following piece of code, usage would be:

compile_rst.py yourtext.rst

or

compile_rst.py yourtext.rst desiredname.html

# compile_rst.py

from __future__ import print_function
from docutils import core
from docutils.writers.html4css1 import Writer,HTMLTranslator
import sys, os

class HTMLFragmentTranslator( HTMLTranslator ):
    def __init__( self, document ):
        HTMLTranslator.__init__( self, document )
        self.head_prefix = ['','','','','']
        self.body_prefix = []
        self.body_suffix = []
        self.stylesheet = []
    def astext(self):
        return ''.join(self.body)

html_fragment_writer = Writer()
html_fragment_writer.translator_class = HTMLFragmentTranslator

def reST_to_html( s ):
    return core.publish_string( s, writer = html_fragment_writer )

if __name__ == '__main__':
    if len(sys.argv)>1:
        if sys.argv[1] != "":
            rstfile = open(sys.argv[1])
            text = rstfile.read()
            rstfile.close()
            if len(sys.argv)>2:
                if sys.argv[2] != "":
                    htmlfile = sys.argv[2]
            else:
                htmlfile = os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(sys.argv[1]))[0]+".html"
            result = reST_to_html(text)
            print(result)
            output = open(htmlfile, "wb")
            output.write(result)
            output.close()  
    else:
        print("Usage:\ncompile_rst.py docname.rst\nwhich results in => docname.html\ncompile_rst.py docname.rst desiredname.html\nwhich results in => desiredname.html")

Solution 5

Building the doc locally

Install Python.
Clone the forked repository to your computer.
Open the folder that contains the repository.
Execute: pip install -r requirements.txt --ignore-installed
Execute: sphinx-build -b html docs build
The rendered documentation is now in the build directory as HTML.

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Comments

[Gustavo Vargas]

I don't think you need the full sphinx to this. rst2html.py is part of docutils which is a dependency of sphinx.

[Calaf]

@GustavoVargas What is an example of just one feature that can be achieved with Sphinx that cannot be done with just rst2html.py, while still aiming for just a one-rst-to-on-html workflow? (This is probably way too open-ended to qualify to be a question.)