1. EDIT
  2. 18. Adding Sphinx extensions
  3. 18.1 Making a Sphinx extension work with A+

Making a Sphinx extension work with A+

(Written in 8/2021, things might change)

In the best case scenario, using a Sphinx extension with an A+ course just requires you to ask the people maintaining the A+ server to install your extension and enabling it in conf.py. If this change is also added to the Docker images used for testing, then testing would work as expected: you add the extension to conf.py, and it just works.

If the extension isn't added to the Docker images, testing gets more complicated.

  • You may install the extension locally and compile RST with locally installed Sphinx. The Docker container used for compiling can not access the locally installed extension and thus, the container fails to build the course.

  • You may include the extension in a subdirectory under the course. Then, the course can be built with the Docker container without installing anything new in the container itself. See the section Adding extensions.

The rest of the document goes to some detail on how everything works, so that you can troubleshoot in case something goes wrong. One thing is important enough to state here:

If the extension uses JavaScript, it will not (as of 14.8.2021) work out of the box. The A+ server removes all html tags from the <head> of the final html page if it does not have the data-aplus attribute. You will have to include the JavaScript yourself: see the section titled "including JavaScript".

Sphinx versions used by a-plus-rst-tools

Note that Sphinx extensions need to be compatible with the used Sphinx version. A-plus-rst-tools itself is one Sphinx extension and A+ courses built in the RST format depend on it. In other words, the Sphinx version supported by the a-plus-rst-tools restricts other Sphinx extensions. In addition, old Sphinx versions might not work on the latest Python versions.

  • a-plus-rst-tools v1.3 and earlier support only Sphinx v1.6. They work on Python 3.5.

  • a-plus-rst-tools v1.4 supports Sphinx v4.1. They work on Python versions 3.7 and later.

Adding extensions

  • Adding as submodule

    • a-plus-rst-tools works as a submodule

    • You might be able to do the same by including the git repository of an extension as a submodule

    • You will have to add the path to the submodule in conf.py with the line sys.path.append(os.path.abspath('PATH/TO/EXTENSION'))

    • And add the extension to the list of extensions in conf.py

  • Adding as plain files

    • You can just place the files of the extension in your course repository (you should find these from the GitHub repository of the extension)

    • You will have to add the path to the submodule in conf.py with the line sys.path.append(os.path.abspath('PATH/TO/EXTENSION'))

    • And add the extension to the list of extensions in conf.py

  • Installing through pip

    • Here you will need the A+ team to install the extension on their server. Otherwise, the course can not be built in the production servers.

    • For building the course locally, either install Sphinx locally or build a new Docker image.

Compiling RST locally without docker-compile.sh

If you compile RST and build the A+ course locally without using Docker and the docker-compile.sh script, you need to install a Python virtual environment in your computer and Sphinx in it. You can also easily install any other Python packages with pip in the virtual environment.

Create a new Python virtual environment in a directory named venv_sphinx with these commands. The command creates the directory venv_sphinx under the current working directory. You can name the directory as you wish.

Set up a Python virtual environment in the directory venv_sphinx
python3 -m venv venv_sphinx
source venv_sphinx/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install --upgrade setuptools
pip install wheel
pip install 'Sphinx~=4.1.2'
pip install 'PyYAML~=5.4.1'

You can activate an existing virtual environment in the current terminal by running source path/to/venv/bin/activate. You can create multiple virtual environments in different directories.

When the virtual environment is active, you can compile RST text by running the command make html in the A+ course directory.

Compile RST
make html
# or
make touchrst html

make touchrst touches all RST files so that Sphinx compiles them again. Otherwise, Sphinx may reuse build output for unchanged files from a previous build. This may cause issues with exercises since Sphinx is unable to detect changes in the exercise YAML files. If the RST files are not touched, then changes to exercises may be ignored in the new build. A clean build can also be forced by deleting the _build directory first.

Installing new packages in the compile-rst image used by docker-compile.sh

If you want to install new (pip) packages to the apluslms/compile-rst Docker image used by the docker-compile.sh script, you need to create a new Dockerfile and build the new image with the docker build command.

Custom compile-rst Dockerfile
FROM apluslms/compile-rst:4.1
RUN pip3 install --no-cache-dir --disable-pip-version-check \
  the_new_package

Build the image with the tag apluslms/compile-rst:dev:

Build a Docker image
docker build -t apluslms/compile-rst:dev -f Dockerfile .

Modify the docker run command in the script docker-compile.sh and set the image to your new image apluslms/compile-rst:dev.

The image exists locally in your computer. It is also possible to publish it in Docker Hub so that others may easily use the same image. That requires a user account in Docker Hub. Read more in the Docker Hub quickstart guide. Others may also build the image themselves if they have the Dockerfile and Docker installed.

Including JavaScript

The A+ server removes all html tags from the <head> of html pages if they don't have the attribute data-aplus (see https://github.com/apluslms/a-plus/blob/master/doc/CONTENT.md). You can add these files by adding them in the _static folder of the course and creating a Jinja2 template that includes them. The template file must be located in _templates/layout.html. The following is an example of a template file that extends the Aplus Sphinx theme by including custom JavaScript files in the extrahead block.

{% extends "!layout.html" %}

{%- block extrahead %}

<script data-aplus="yes" src="{{ pathto('_static/NAME-OF-JS-FILE.js) }}"></script>

{% endblock %}

Sphinx extensions usually add JS and CSS files with the functions app.add_js_file and app.add_css_file. However, a-plus-rst-tools does not include all of those files in the built HTML files.

  • A-plus-rst-tools v1.4 includes those files if they have the attribute data-aplus. Functions app.add_js_file and app.add_css_file may add attributes with keyword parameters (since Sphinx v1.8).

  • A-plus-rst-tools v1.3 and earlier do not include those files at all. They can be added manually in the course (in _templates/layout.html).

Note that a-plus-rst-tools v1.3 and earlier support only Sphinx v1.6. A-plus-rst-tools v1.4 supports Sphinx v4.1.

Everything said in this section also holds for CSS files. You similarly have to add those manually, either as separate files or as part of a global custom CSS file for your course (html_style in conf.py).

Aplus architecture

The build process of an Aplus page can be thought to work in three steps:

  • Sphinx

    • Builds a webpage in _build, with html and static files

  • Mooc-grader

    • Processes the files in _build and serves them

    • Written in Django

    • At localhost:8080 when using testing containers

  • Aplus frontend

    • Serves as a front-end for mooc-grader

    • Written in Django

    • At localhost:8000 when using testing containers

If something goes wrong with how your extension works, you might want to investigate which of these steps causes the issue.

Software versions

  • The docker containers provided for testing might have different versions from the server

    • Python versions might cause issues

    • Sphinx versions might cause issues

  • You can change the versions of containers by editing docker-compile.sh and docker-compose.yml

Troubleshooting

  • Set verbose flags (possibly multiple) in the Makefile, at the point where html processing happens

  • Look at the files in _build vs the files served by mooc-grader vs the files served by aplus-front

  • You can try to disable all Aplus related settings (theme, extension) and run the sphinx-build command yourself (see the Makefile for the syntax)

  • Aplus removes all tags in the html head that don't have the data-aplus attribute

  • In the Aplus course page, under the Edit course section, you can look at the build log for the newest version pushed to git

Documentation

This is a list of documentation that might come in handy if you need to troubleshoot a problem.

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