Create different documents from the same sources using Jinja

Profile reStructuredText content with Jinja and a Python preprocessing script to generate audience-specific document variants - user, admin, lite - from a single source.

Updated September 2026, 1 min read

View as Markdown Open in ChatGPT Open in Claude

Objective

The profiling.py Python script below allows you to profile content in preprocessing using the powerful Jinja template engine.

Steps

Create the profiling.py script:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import jinja2
import sys

public=str(sys.argv[1])
env = jinja2.Environment(loader=jinja2.FileSystemLoader('./'))
template = env.get_template('conditional-text.rst')
string=template.render(audience=public)

file = open('conditional-text-output.rst','w')
file.write(string)
file.close()

Create the content file conditional-text.rst:

Using conditional text
=================================

{% if audience=='electrician' %}

.. admonition:: Danger for electricians

   Risk of electrocution

   Do not touch electrical wires.

{% else %}

.. admonition:: Danger for plumbers

   Risk of drowning

   Do not dive into the pool.

{% endif %}

Run the script with the audience as parameter:
Terminal window
```
./profiling.py electrician
```
The script writes the version of the content for this audience to conditional-text-output.rst.
Call the script before compiling via Sphinx in the Makefile.

Next steps

For a more complex variant using object-oriented classes, see creating different documents via Jinja (object method).
You can also generate documents directly from ReST conditional text without a separate preprocessing step.