The WebSupport Class¶

class sphinx.websupport.WebSupport¶

The main API class for the web support package. All interactions with the web support package should occur through this class.

The class takes the following keyword arguments:

srcdir: The directory containing reStructuredText source files.
builddir: The directory that build data and static files should be placed in. This should be used when creating a WebSupport object that will be used to build data.
datadir: The directory that the web support data is in. This should be used when creating a WebSupport object that will be used to retrieve data.
search: This may contain either a string (e.g. ‘xapian’) referencing a built-in search adapter to use, or an instance of a subclass of BaseSearch.
storage: This may contain either a string representing a database uri, or an instance of a subclass of StorageBackend. If this is not provided, a new sqlite database will be created.
moderation_callback: A callable to be called when a new comment is added that is not displayed. It must accept one argument: a dictionary representing the comment that was added.
staticdir: If static files are served from a location besides '/static', this should be a string with the name of that location (e.g. '/static_files').
docroot: If the documentation is not served from the base path of a URL, this should be a string specifying that path (e.g. 'docs').

Methods¶

WebSupport.build()¶

Build the documentation. Places the data into the outdir directory. Use it like this:

support = WebSupport(srcdir, builddir, search='xapian')
support.build()

This will read reStructured text files from srcdir. Then it will build the pickles and search index, placing them into builddir. It will also save node data to the database.

WebSupport.get_document(docname, username='', moderator=False)¶

Load and return a document from a pickle. The document will be a dict object which can be used to render a template:

support = WebSupport(datadir=datadir)
support.get_document('index', username, moderator)

In most cases docname will be taken from the request path and passed directly to this function. In Flask, that would be something like this:

@app.route('/<path:docname>')
def index(docname):
    username = g.user.name if g.user else ''
    moderator = g.user.moderator if g.user else False
    try:
        document = support.get_document(docname, username,
                                        moderator)
    except DocumentNotFoundError:
        abort(404)
    render_template('doc.html', document=document)

The document dict that is returned contains the following items to be used during template rendering.

body: The main body of the document as HTML
sidebar: The sidebar of the document as HTML
relbar: A div containing links to related documents
title: The title of the document
css: Links to css files used by Sphinx
script: Javascript containing comment options

This raises DocumentNotFoundError if a document matching docname is not found.

Parameters:	docname – the name of the document to load.

WebSupport.get_data(node_id, username=None, moderator=False)¶

Get the comments and source associated with node_id. If username is given vote information will be included with the returned comments. The default CommentBackend returns a dict with two keys, source, and comments. source is raw source of the node and is used as the starting point for proposals a user can add. comments is a list of dicts that represent a comment, each having the following items:

Key	Contents
text	The comment text.
username	The username that was stored with the comment.
id	The comment’s unique identifier.
rating	The comment’s current rating.
age	The time in seconds since the comment was added.
time	A dict containing time information. It contains the following keys: year, month, day, hour, minute, second, iso, and delta. iso is the time formatted in ISO 8601 format. delta is a printable form of how old the comment is (e.g. “3 hours ago”).
vote	If user_id was given, this will be an integer representing the vote. 1 for an upvote, -1 for a downvote, or 0 if unvoted.
node	The id of the node that the comment is attached to. If the comment’s parent is another comment rather than a node, this will be null.
parent	The id of the comment that this comment is attached to if it is not attached to a node.
children	A list of all children, in this format.
proposal_diff	An HTML representation of the differences between the the current source and the user’s proposed source.

Parameters:	node_id – the id of the node to get comments for. username – the username of the user viewing the comments. moderator – whether the user is a moderator.

WebSupport.add_comment(text, node_id='', parent_id='', displayed=True, username=None, time=None, proposal=None, moderator=False)¶

Add a comment to a node or another comment. Returns the comment in the same format as get_comments(). If the comment is being attached to a node, pass in the node’s id (as a string) with the node keyword argument:

comment = support.add_comment(text, node_id=node_id)

If the comment is the child of another comment, provide the parent’s id (as a string) with the parent keyword argument:

comment = support.add_comment(text, parent_id=parent_id)

If you would like to store a username with the comment, pass in the optional username keyword argument:

comment = support.add_comment(text, node=node_id,
                              username=username)

Parameters:	parent_id – the prefixed id of the comment’s parent. text – the text of the comment. displayed – for moderation purposes username – the username of the user making the comment. time – the time the comment was created, defaults to now.

WebSupport.process_vote(comment_id, username, value)¶

Process a user’s vote. The web support package relies on the API user to perform authentication. The API user will typically receive a comment_id and value from a form, and then make sure the user is authenticated. A unique username must be passed in, which will also be used to retrieve the user’s past voting data. An example, once again in Flask:

@app.route('/docs/process_vote', methods=['POST'])
def process_vote():
    if g.user is None:
        abort(401)
    comment_id = request.form.get('comment_id')
    value = request.form.get('value')
    if value is None or comment_id is None:
        abort(400)
    support.process_vote(comment_id, g.user.name, value)
    return "success"

Parameters:	comment_id – the comment being voted on username – the unique username of the user voting value – 1 for an upvote, -1 for a downvote, 0 for an unvote.

WebSupport.get_search_results(q)¶

Perform a search for the query q, and create a set of search results. Then render the search results as html and return a context dict like the one created by get_document():

document = support.get_search_results(q)

Parameters:	q – the search query

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