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Docs Multi-instance

The @docusaurus/plugin-content-docs plugin can support multi-instance.

note

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.

warning

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:

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.

warning

@docusaurus/preset-classic already includes a docs plugin instance for you!

When using the preset:

docusaurus.config.js
export default {
  presets: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/preset-classic',
      {
        docs: {
          // id: 'product', // omitted => default instance
          path: 'product',
          routeBasePath: 'product',
          sidebarPath: './sidebarsProduct.js',
          // ... other options
        },
      },
    ],
  ],
  plugins: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/plugin-content-docs',
      {
        id: 'community',
        path: 'community',
        routeBasePath: 'community',
        sidebarPath: './sidebarsCommunity.js',
        // ... other options
      },
    ],
  ],
};

When not using the preset:

docusaurus.config.js
export default {
  plugins: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/plugin-content-docs',
      {
        // id: 'product', // omitted => default instance
        path: 'product',
        routeBasePath: 'product',
        sidebarPath: './sidebarsProduct.js',
        // ... other options
      },
    ],
    [
      '@docusaurus/plugin-content-docs',
      {
        id: 'community',
        path: 'community',
        routeBasePath: 'community',
        sidebarPath: './sidebarsCommunity.js',
        // ... other options
      },
    ],
  ],
};

Don't forget to assign a unique id attribute to plugin instances.

note

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
tip

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 run docusaurus -- --help

To version the product/default docs plugin instance:

npm run docusaurus docs:version 1.0.0

To version the non-default/community docs plugin instance:

npm 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:

docusaurus.config.js
export default {
  themeConfig: {
    navbar: {
      items: [
        {
          type: 'docsVersionDropdown',
          docsPluginId: 'ios',
        },
        {
          type: 'docsVersionDropdown',
          docsPluginId: 'android',
        },
      ],
    },
  },
};