sphinx-jinja

What it is and what it does

sphinx-jinja is a Sphinx extension that adds a jinja directive to reStructuredText, allowing you to embed Jinja2 template code directly in your documentation source. At build time, the extension renders these templates using contexts you define in your Sphinx conf.py, producing dynamic RST content that Sphinx then processes normally. You configure contexts, custom filters, tests, globals, and Jinja environment settings in your configuration file, then reference them by name in your RST directives.

The extension is useful when your documentation needs to be generated from data structures, iterate over collections, or apply conditional logic—tasks that plain RST cannot express. You can inline templates in your RST files or load them from separate Jinja files using the file option. It also supports header-level management and debug output to inspect the generated RST before final rendering.

Use it for

• Generate API documentation tables or lists by iterating over structured data in conf.py.
• Conditionally include or exclude documentation sections based on configuration flags.
• Apply custom formatting to template variables using Jinja filters.
• Load and render reusable documentation templates from external Jinja files.
• Maintain DRY documentation by templating repetitive content patterns.

Worth the install?

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Install

sphinx-jinja on PyPI

Before you install

Low friction install with three stable dependencies. Maintenance is dormant—last release was 2022-07-05 and no commits since 2023-11-02—so expect no active support, though the package remains functional for current Python versions.

Requires Sphinx, Jinja2, and docutils to be installed; Python >=3.6,<4 required.

License in practice

MIT license is permissive, allowing use in commercial and private projects with minimal restrictions.

Quickstart

pip install sphinx-jinja

In conf.py:
extensions = ['sphinx_jinja']
jinja_contexts = {'ctx': {'items': ['a', 'b']}}

In your .rst file:
.. jinja:: ctx

   {% for item in items %}
   - {{ item }}
   {% endfor %}

Package facts

Evidence: sphinx_jinja-2.0.2-py3-none-any.whl

Tags

More Sphinx packages

See also sphinx-jinja2-compat · sphinx-substitution-extensions · sphinxcontrib.datatemplates · sphinx_mdinclude · Jinja2 · sphinx-markdown-builder · sphinxcontrib-googleanalytics · sphinxemoji · sphinxcontrib-video · sphinx-favicon