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.
Simple “inclusion” of one file in another can be done with the include directive.
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
maxdepthoption may be given to indicate the depth of the tree; by default, all levels are included. 
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.
toctreedirectives in those documents are also taken into account.
- Sphinx knows that the relative order of the documents
stringsand 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.
Document titles in the
toctreewill 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
stringsdocument, but will use the title “All about strings” instead of the title of the
You can also add external links, by giving an HTTP URL instead of a document name.
If you want to have section numbers even in HTML output, give the toplevel toctree a
numberedoption. For example:
.. toctree:: :numbered: foo bar
Numbering then starts at the heading of
foo. Sub-toctrees are automatically numbered (don’t give the
numberedflag to those).
Numbering up to a specific depth is also possible, by giving the depth as a numeric argument to
You can use
captionoption to provide a toctree caption and you can use
nameoption to provide implicit target name that can be referenced by using
.. toctree:: :caption: Table of Contents :name: mastertoc foo
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
.. toctree:: :titlesonly: foo bar
You can use “globbing” in toctree directives, by giving the
globflag 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 the
recipefolder, then all remaining documents (except the one containing the directive, of course.) 
The special entry name
selfstands 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 cases where you want to have only one top-level toctree and hide all other lower level toctrees you can add the “includehidden” option to the top-level toctree entry:
.. toctree:: :includehidden: doc_1 doc_2
All other toctree entries can then be eliminated by the “hidden” option.
In the end, all documents in the source directory (or subdirectories) must occur in some
toctreedirective; 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.
exclude_patternsto explicitly exclude documents or directories from building completely. Use the “orphan” metadata to let a document be built, but notify Sphinx that it is not reachable via a toctree.
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 a
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”.
Changed in version 1.2: Added “includehidden” option.
Changed in version 1.3: Added “caption” and “name” option.
- Tables of contents from all those documents are inserted, with a maximum depth of two, that means one nested heading.
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:
These are used for the general index, the Python module index, and the search page, respectively.
The Python module index contains one entry per
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.)
Be careful with unusual characters in filenames. Some formats may interpret these characters in unexpected ways:
- Do not use the colon
:for HTML based formats. Links to other parts may not work.
- Do not use the plus
+for the ePub format. Some resources may not be found.
|||The LaTeX writer only refers the |
|||A note on available globbing syntax: you can use the standard shell