Docs Multi-instance
The @docusaurus/plugin-content-docs
plugin can support multi-instance.
This feature is only useful for versioned documentation. It is recommended to be familiar with docs versioning before reading this page. If you just want multiple sidebars, you can do so within one plugin.
Use-cases
Sometimes you want a Docusaurus site to host 2 distinct sets of documentation (or more).
These documentations may even have different versioning/release lifecycles.
Mobile SDKs documentation
If you build a cross-platform mobile SDK, you may have 2 documentations:
- Android SDK documentation (
v1.0
,v1.1
) - iOS SDK documentation (
v1.0
,v2.0
)
In this case, you can use a distinct docs plugin instance per mobile SDK documentation.
If each documentation instance is very large, you should rather create 2 distinct Docusaurus sites.
If someone edits the iOS documentation, is it really useful to rebuild everything, including the whole Android documentation that did not change?
Versioned and unversioned doc
Sometimes, you want some documents to be versioned, while other documents are more "global", and it feels useless to version them.
We use this pattern on the Docusaurus website itself:
- The /docs/* section is versioned
- The /community/* section is unversioned
Setup
Suppose you have 2 documentations:
- Product: some versioned doc about your product
- Community: some unversioned doc about the community around your product
In this case, you should use the same plugin twice in your site configuration.
@docusaurus/preset-classic
already includes a docs plugin instance for you!
When using the preset:
module.exports = {
presets: [
[
'@docusaurus/preset-classic',
{
docs: {
// id: 'product', // omitted => default instance
path: 'product',
routeBasePath: 'product',
sidebarPath: require.resolve('./sidebarsProduct.js'),
// ... other options
},
},
],
],
plugins: [
[
'@docusaurus/plugin-content-docs',
{
id: 'community',
path: 'community',
routeBasePath: 'community',
sidebarPath: require.resolve('./sidebarsCommunity.js'),
// ... other options
},
],
],
};
When not using the preset:
module.exports = {
plugins: [
[
'@docusaurus/plugin-content-docs',
{
// id: 'product', // omitted => default instance
path: 'product',
routeBasePath: 'product',
sidebarPath: require.resolve('./sidebarsProduct.js'),
// ... other options
},
],
[
'@docusaurus/plugin-content-docs',
{
id: 'community',
path: 'community',
routeBasePath: 'community',
sidebarPath: require.resolve('./sidebarsCommunity.js'),
// ... other options
},
],
],
};
Don't forget to assign a unique id
attribute to plugin instances.
We consider that the product
instance is the most important one, and make it the "default" instance by not assigning any ID.
Versioned paths
Each plugin instance will store versioned docs in a distinct folder.
The default plugin instance will use these paths:
website/versions.json
website/versioned_docs
website/versioned_sidebars
The other plugin instances (with an id
attribute) will use these paths:
website/[pluginId]_versions.json
website/[pluginId]_versioned_docs
website/[pluginId]_versioned_sidebars
You can omit the id
attribute (defaults to default
) for one of the docs plugin instances.
The instance paths will be simpler, and retro-compatible with a single-instance setup.
Tagging new versions
Each plugin instance will have its own CLI command to tag a new version. They will be displayed if you run:
- npm
- Yarn
npm run docusaurus -- --help
yarn run docusaurus -- --help
To version the product/default docs plugin instance:
- npm
- Yarn
npm run docusaurus docs:version 1.0.0
yarn run docusaurus docs:version 1.0.0
To version the non-default/community docs plugin instance:
- npm
- Yarn
npm run docusaurus docs:version:community 1.0.0
yarn run docusaurus docs:version:community 1.0.0
Docs navbar items
Each docs-related theme navbar items take an optional docsPluginId
attribute.
For example, if you want to have one version dropdown for each mobile SDK (iOS and Android), you could do:
module.exports = {
themeConfig: {
navbar: {
items: [
{
type: 'docsVersionDropdown',
docsPluginId: 'ios',
},
{
type: 'docsVersionDropdown',
docsPluginId: 'android',
},
],
},
},
};