[Docutils-users] Custom Directives

[Paul VonZimmerman]

Hello everyone,

I have a question about creating custom directives. My approach thus far
has been to iterate through self.content and wrap HTML around it. I then
convert the HTMLto rST using nodes.raw(). Is this a valid approach or
frowned upon when creating custom directives?

Here is a bit of sample code:

class eCard(Directive):
"""
usage:
.. ecard::

[name]
[image]
[name]
[image]
"""
has_content = True
optional_arguments = 0
def run(self):
this = "<h2 id=\"da_header\">Desk Attendants</h2>\n <div
id=\"da_ecard_container\">\n"
count = 0
for item in range(0, len(self.content)/2):
name = self.content[count]
image = self.content[count+1]
count += 2
this += "<div class=\"ecard\">\n"
this += '<img class="da_image" src=' + image + ' alt="' + name
+ '"/>\n'
this += "<span>" + name + "</span\n>"
this += "</div>\n"
this += "</div>\n"
this = nodes.raw('', this, format='html')
return [this]
directives.register_directive('ecard', eCard)

I haven't run into anything wrong with this approach, I'm mostly just
curious if this way will cause problems in the future.