rsStructureText to Node Tree using docutils

parse_rst.py

"""
Parse reStructureText into Node Tree
"""

from docutils.parsers.rst import Parser
from docutils.utils import new_document
from docutils.frontend import OptionParser

import logging

PATH = 'sample.rst'

parser = Parser()

with open(PATH, 'rb') as f:
    data = f.read()
    logging.debug('Loaded %d lines' % len(data))

settings = OptionParser(components=(Parser,)).get_default_values()
document = new_document(PATH, settings)
parser.parse(data, document)

# Play with the document

sample.rst

Title

Subtitle

Titles are underlined (or over- and underlined) with a printing nonalphanumeric 7-bit ASCII character. Recommended choices are "= - ` : ' " ~ ^ _ * + # < >". The underline/overline must be at least as long as the title text.

A lone top-level (sub)section is lifted up to be the document's (sub)title.