sphinx-exec-directive

sphinx-exec-directive allows you to write code blocks in reStructuredText files, execute them during Sphinx compilation, and display the output directly within the generated documentation.

The 'default' code language is Python, but there is some limited support for other languages right now. Note that for other languages, you will need to have the corresponding executables on $PATH. See: Other Languages.

This is based very strongly on matplotlib's plot_directive extension, but is used for running code instead of generating plots.

Note: This allows arbitrary code execution. Don't do silly things with it.

Contents

• Installation
• Basic usage: Python code blocks
• Reading code from a file
• Other languages
• Caching
• Preserving context

Installation

Install from PyPI:

pip install sphinx-exec-directive

or manually:

git clone https://github.com/yongrenjie/sphinx-exec-directive
cd sphinx-exec-directive
pip install .

Then, inside your Sphinx conf.py, add sphinx_exec_directive to your list of extensions (note: underscores not hyphens).

extensions = [
    sphinx_exec_directive,
    # other extensions...
]

Basic usage: Python code blocks

A short example will suffice. Putting

.. exec::
   
   print(1 + 1)

into your RST file will generate two literal blocks, one with the 'input' source code, and one with the captured stdout. It looks pretty basic, but it does the job:

Note that objects must be printed to stdout, or they will not be displayed. This behaviour therefore differs slightly from the functionality in a Jupyter notebook (where the last line is evaluated and the result displayed automatically), or the interactive Python console. If nothing is printed to stdout (or only empty space is) then the output literal block will be omitted.

Reading code from a file

Instead of inserting the code literally into the RST sources, you can also put it in a separate file. The file path must be given relative to the top-level Sphinx directory (i.e. the directory which conf.py is in):

.. exec:: subfolder/my_script.py

The same conditions apply; anything you want to display must be printed to stdout.

Other languages

A few other processes are available, for running code in different languages. These all use the :process: PROCESS option, where PROCESS is one of the following. For these to work, you will need to have certain executables present in your PATH.

An example of executing Haskell code can be found here.

I plan to generalise this (see #7) in the future.

Caching

Outputs are cached by default, unless context preservation has been requested in any part of the same document (see #4 for rationale). To turn this off on a per-codeblock basis (e.g. if the code depends on the time which it is run at), specify a falsy value for the :cache option.

.. exec::
   :cache: false
   
   from datetime import datetime
   print(datetime.now())

Preserving context

Setting the :context: option to a truthy value will keep any objects in the current exec directive "alive" for the next one. Note that this only works for Python blocks, and is incompatible with caching (see above).

.. exec::
   :context: true

   x = 5
   print(x)

Some other text goes here... Let's print x again...

.. exec::

   print(x)

It will work.