The TOC tree¶
Since reST does not have facilities to interconnect several documents, or split
documents into multiple output files, Sphinx uses a custom directive to add
relations between the single files the documentation is made of, as well as
tables of contents. The toctree
directive is the central element.
-
.. toctree::
¶ This directive inserts a “TOC tree” at the current location, using the individual TOCs (including “sub-TOC trees”) of the documents given in the directive body. Relative document names (not beginning with a slash) are relative to the document the directive occurs in, absolute names are relative to the source directory. A numeric
maxdepth
option may be given to indicate the depth of the tree; by default, all levels are included. [1]Consider this example (taken from the Python docs’ library reference index):
.. toctree:: :maxdepth: 2 intro strings datatypes numeric (many more documents listed here)
This accomplishes two things:
- Tables of contents from all those documents are inserted, with a maximum
depth of two, that means one nested heading.
toctree
directives in those documents are also taken into account. - Sphinx knows that the relative order of the documents
intro
,strings
and so forth, and it knows that they are children of the shown document, the library index. From this information it generates “next chapter”, “previous chapter” and “parent chapter” links.
Entries
Document titles in the
toctree
will be automatically read from the title of the referenced document. If that isn’t what you want, you can specify an explicit title and target using a similar syntax to reST hyperlinks (and Sphinx’s cross-referencing syntax). This looks like:.. toctree:: intro All about strings <strings> datatypes
The second line above will link to the
strings
document, but will use the title “All about strings” instead of the title of thestrings
document.You can also add external links, by giving an HTTP URL instead of a document name.
Section numbering
If you want to have section numbers even in HTML output, give the toctree a
numbered
option. For example:.. toctree:: :numbered: foo bar
Numbering then starts at the heading of
foo
. Sub-toctrees are automatically numbered (don’t give thenumbered
flag to those).Numbering up to a specific depth is also possible, by giving the depth as a numeric argument to
numbered
.Additional options
If you want only the titles of documents in the tree to show up, not other headings of the same level, you can use the
titlesonly
option:.. toctree:: :titlesonly: foo bar
You can use “globbing” in toctree directives, by giving the
glob
flag option. All entries are then matched against the list of available documents, and matches are inserted into the list alphabetically. Example:.. toctree:: :glob: intro* recipe/* *
This includes first all documents whose names start with
intro
, then all documents in therecipe
folder, then all remaining documents (except the one containing the directive, of course.) [2]The special entry name
self
stands for the document containing the toctree directive. This is useful if you want to generate a “sitemap” from the toctree.You can also give a “hidden” option to the directive, like this:
.. toctree:: :hidden: doc_1 doc_2
This will still notify Sphinx of the document hierarchy, but not insert links into the document at the location of the directive – this makes sense if you intend to insert these links yourself, in a different style, or in the HTML sidebar.
In the end, all documents in the source directory (or subdirectories) must occur in some
toctree
directive; Sphinx will emit a warning if it finds a file that is not included, because that means that this file will not be reachable through standard navigation. Useunused_docs
to explicitly exclude documents from building, andexclude_trees
to exclude whole directories.The “master document” (selected by
master_doc
) is the “root” of the TOC tree hierarchy. It can be used as the documentation’s main page, or as a “full table of contents” if you don’t give amaxdepth
option.Changed in version 0.3: Added “globbing” option.
Changed in version 0.6: Added “numbered” and “hidden” options as well as external links and support for “self” references.
Changed in version 1.0: Added “titlesonly” option.
Changed in version 1.1: Added numeric argument to “numbered”.
- Tables of contents from all those documents are inserted, with a maximum
depth of two, that means one nested heading.
Special names¶
Sphinx reserves some document names for its own use; you should not try to create documents with these names – it will cause problems.
The special document names (and pages generated for them) are:
genindex
,modindex
,search
These are used for the general index, the Python module index, and the search page, respectively.
The general index is populated with entries from modules, all index-generating object descriptions, and from
index
directives.The Python module index contains one entry per
py:module
directive.The search page contains a form that uses the generated JSON search index and JavaScript to full-text search the generated documents for search words; it should work on every major browser that supports modern JavaScript.
every name beginning with
_
Though only few such names are currently used by Sphinx, you should not create documents or document-containing directories with such names. (Using
_
as a prefix for a custom template directory is fine.)
Footnotes
[1] | The maxdepth option does not apply to the LaTeX writer, where the
whole table of contents will always be presented at the begin of the
document, and its depth is controlled by the tocdepth counter, which
you can reset in your latex_preamble config value using
e.g. \setcounter{tocdepth}{2} . |
[2] | A note on available globbing syntax: you can use the standard shell
constructs * , ? , [...] and [!...] with the feature that
these all don’t match slashes. A double star ** can be used to match
any sequence of characters including slashes. |