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Version: next

Docs Introduction

The docs feature provides users with a way to organize Markdown files in a hierarchical format.

Document ID

Every document has a unique id. By default, a document id is the name of the document (without the extension) relative to the root docs directory.

For example, greeting.md id is greeting and guide/hello.md id is guide/hello.

website # root directory of your site
└── docs
   ├── greeting.md
└── guide
└── hello.md

However, the last part of the id can be defined by user in the front matter. For example, if guide/hello.md's content is defined as below, its final id is guide/part1.

---
id: part1
---
Lorem ipsum

Home page docs

Using the homePageId property, you can create a home page of your docs. To do this, you can create a new document, especially for this purpose with the id as _index, or you could specify an existing document id.

docusaurus.config.js
module.exports = {
// ...
presets: [
[
'@docusaurus/preset-classic',
{
docs: {
homePageId: 'getting-started', // Defaults to `_index`
// ...
},
},
],
],
// ...
};

Given the example above, now when you navigate to the path /docs you will see that the document content with id is getting-started. This functionality also works for docs with versioning enabled.

important

The document id of _index is reserved exclusively for the home doc page, so it will not work as a standalone route.

note

The page docs that you created (eg. src/pages/docs.js) will take precedence over the route generated via the homePageId option.

Sidebar

To generate a sidebar to your Docusaurus site, you need to define a file that exports a sidebar object and pass that into the @docusaurus/plugin-docs plugin directly or via @docusaurus/preset-classic.

docusaurus.config.js
module.exports = {
// ...
presets: [
[
'@docusaurus/preset-classic',
{
docs: {
// Sidebars filepath relative to the site dir.
sidebarPath: require.resolve('./sidebars.js'),
},
// ...
},
],
],
};

Sidebar object

A sidebar object is defined like this.

type Sidebar = {
[sidebarId: string]:
| {
[sidebarCategory: string]: SidebarItem[];
}
| SidebarItem[];
};

Below is an example of a sidebar object. The key docs is the id of the sidebar (can be renamed to something else) and Getting Started is a category within the sidebar. greeting and doc1 are both sidebar item.

sidebars.js
module.exports = {
docs: {
'Getting started': ['greeting'],
Docusaurus: ['doc1'],
},
};

Keep in mind that EcmaScript does not guarantee Object.keys({a,b}) === ['a','b'] (yet, this is generally true). If you don't want to rely on iteration order of JavaScript object keys for the category name, the following sidebar object is also equivalent of the above shorthand syntax.

sidebars.js
module.exports = {
docs: [
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Getting Started',
items: ['greeting'],
},
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Docusaurus',
items: ['doc1'],
},
],
};

You can also have multiple sidebars for different Markdown files by adding more top-level keys to the exported object.

Example:

sidebars.js
module.exports = {
firstSidebar: {
'Category A': ['doc1'],
},
secondSidebar: {
'Category A': ['doc2'],
'Category B': ['doc3'],
},
};

Sidebar item

As the name implies, SidebarItem is an item defined in a Sidebar. There are a few types we support:

Doc

type SidebarItemDoc =
| string
| {
type: 'doc';
id: string;
};

Sidebar item type that links to a doc page. Example:

{
type: 'doc',
id: 'doc1', // string - document id
}

Using just the Document ID is perfectly valid as well, the following is equivalent to the above:

'doc1'; // string - document id

Note that using this type will bind the linked doc to current sidebar, this means that if you access doc1 page, the sidebar displayed will be the sidebar this item is on. For below case, doc1 is bounded to firstSidebar.

sidebars.js
module.exports = {
firstSidebar: {
'Category A': ['doc1'],
},
secondSidebar: {
'Category A': ['doc2'],
'Category B': ['doc3'],
},
};

Link

type SidebarItemLink = {
type: 'link';
label: string;
href: string;
};

Sidebar item type that links to a non-document page. Example:

{
type: 'link',
label: 'Custom Label', // string - the label that should be displayed.
href: 'https://example.com' // string - the target URL.
}

Ref

type SidebarItemRef = {
type: 'ref';
id: string;
};

Sidebar item type that links to doc without bounding it to the sidebar. Example:

{
type: 'ref',
id: 'doc1', // string - document id
}

Category

This is used to add hierarchies to the sidebar:

type SidebarItemCategory = {
type: 'category';
label: string; // Sidebar label text.
items: SidebarItem[]; // Array of sidebar items.
};

As an example, here's how we created the subcategory for "Docs" under "Guides" in this site:

sidebars.js
module.exports = {
docs: {
Guides: [
'creating-pages',
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Docs',
items: ['markdown-features', 'sidebar', 'versioning'],
},
],
},
};

Note: it's possible to use the shorthand syntax to create nested categories:

sidebars.js
module.exports = {
docs: {
Guides: [
'creating-pages',
{
Docs: ['markdown-features', 'sidebar', 'versioning'],
},
],
},
};

Collapsible categories

For sites with a sizable amount of content, we support the option to expand/collapse a category to toggle the display of its contents. Categories are collapsible by default. If you want them to be always expanded, set themeConfig.sidebarCollapsible to false:

docusaurus.config.js
module.exports = {
// ...
themeConfig: {
sidebarCollapsible: false,
// ...
},
};

Docs-only mode

If you just want the documentation feature, you can enable "docs-only mode".

To achieve this, set the routeBasePath property of the docs object in @docusaurus/preset-classic in docusaurus.config.js to the root of your site, and also in that object set the homePageId property with the value of the document ID that you show as root of the docs.

note

More details on functionality of home page for docs can be found in appropriate section.

docusaurus.config.js
module.exports = {
// ...
presets: [
[
'@docusaurus/preset-classic',
{
docs: {
routeBasePath: '/', // Set this value to '/'.
homePageId: 'getting-started', // Set to existing document id.
// ...
},
},
],
],
// ...
};

Now, when visiting your site, it will show your initial document instead of a landing page.

tip

There's also a "blog-only mode", for those who only want to use the blog component of Docusaurus 2. You can use the same method detailed above, except that you need to delete the /src/pages/index.js file. Follow the setup instructions on Blog-only mode.

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Last updated on by Philipp Lindner