Sidebar
Creating a sidebar is useful to:
- Group multiple related documents into an ordered tree
- Display a common sidebar on each of those documents
- Provide paginated navigation, with next/previous button
To use sidebars on your Docusaurus site:
- Define a sidebars file that exports a dictionary of sidebar objects.
- Pass its path to the
@docusaurus/plugin-docsplugin directly or via@docusaurus/preset-classic.
export default {
presets: [
[
'@docusaurus/preset-classic',
{
docs: {
sidebarPath: './sidebars.js',
},
},
],
],
};
The sidebars file is run with Node.js. You can't use or import browsers APIs, React or JSX in it.
This section serves as an overview of miscellaneous features of the doc sidebar. In the following sections, we will more systematically introduce the following concepts:
📄️ Sidebar items
The sidebar supports various item types:
📄️ Autogenerated
Docusaurus can create a sidebar automatically from your filesystem structure: each folder creates a sidebar category, and each file creates a doc link.
📄️ Using multiple sidebars
You can create a sidebar for each set of Markdown files that you want to group together.
Default sidebar
If the sidebarPath is unspecified, Docusaurus automatically generates a sidebar for you, by using the filesystem structure of the docs folder:
export default {
mySidebar: [
{
type: 'autogenerated',
dirName: '.', // generate sidebar from the docs folder (or versioned_docs/<version>)
},
],
};
You can also define your sidebars explicitly.
Sidebar object
A sidebar is a hierarchy of categories, doc links, and other hyperlinks.
type Sidebar =
// Normal syntax
| SidebarItem[]
// Shorthand syntax
| {[categoryLabel: string]: SidebarItem[]};
For example:
export default {
mySidebar: [
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Getting Started',
items: [
{
type: 'doc',
id: 'doc1',
},
],
},
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Docusaurus',
items: [
{
type: 'doc',
id: 'doc2',
},
{
type: 'doc',
id: 'doc3',
},
],
},
{
type: 'link',
label: 'Learn more',
href: 'https://example.com',
},
],
};
This is a sidebars file that exports one sidebar, called mySidebar. It has three top-level items: two categories and one external link. Within each category, there are a few doc links.
A sidebars file can contain multiple sidebar objects, identified by their object keys.
type SidebarsFile = {
[sidebarID: string]: Sidebar;
};
Theme configuration
Hideable sidebar
By enabling the themeConfig.docs.sidebar.hideable option, you can make the entire sidebar hideable, allowing users to better focus on the content. This is especially useful when content is consumed on medium-sized screens (e.g. tablets).
export default {
themeConfig: {
docs: {
sidebar: {
hideable: true,
},
},
},
};
Auto-collapse sidebar categories
The themeConfig.docs.sidebar.autoCollapseCategories option would collapse all sibling categories when expanding one category. This saves the user from having too many categories open and helps them focus on the selected section.
export default {
themeConfig: {
docs: {
sidebar: {
autoCollapseCategories: true,
},
},
},
};
Passing CSS classes
To pass CSS classes to a sidebar item, add the optional className attribute to any of the items. This is useful to apply visual customizations to specific sidebar items.
{
type: 'doc',
id: 'doc1',
className: 'sidebar-item--highlighted',
};
Passing custom props
To pass in custom props to a sidebar item, add the optional customProps object to any of the items. This is useful to apply site customizations by swizzling React components rendering sidebar items.
{
type: 'doc',
id: 'doc1',
customProps: {
badges: ['new', 'green'],
featured: true,
},
};
Passing a unique key
Passing a unique key attribute can help uniquely identify a sidebar item. Sometimes other attributes (such as label) are not enough to distinguish two sidebar items from each other.
{
type: 'category',
label: 'API', // You may have multiple categories with this widespread label
key: 'api-for-feature-1', // and now, they can be uniquely identified
};
Docusaurus only uses the key attribute to generate unique i18n translation keys. When a translation key conflict happens (issue), Docusaurus will tell you to apply a key to distinguish sidebar items.
Alternatively, you may have your own reasons for using the key attribute that will be passed to the respective sidebar item React components.
Sidebar Breadcrumbs
By default, breadcrumbs are rendered at the top, using the "sidebar path" of the current page.
This behavior can be disabled with plugin options:
export default {
presets: [
[
'@docusaurus/preset-classic',
{
docs: {
breadcrumbs: false,
},
},
],
],
};
Complex sidebars example
A real-world example from the Docusaurus site:
import type {SidebarsConfig} from '@docusaurus/plugin-content-docs';
const sidebars: SidebarsConfig = {
docs: [
'introduction',
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Getting Started',
link: {
type: 'generated-index',
},
collapsed: false,
items: [
'installation',
'configuration',
'playground',
'typescript-support',
],
},
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Guides',
link: {
type: 'generated-index',
title: 'Docusaurus Guides',
description:
"Let's learn about the most important Docusaurus concepts!",
keywords: ['guides'],
image: '/img/docusaurus.png',
},
items: [
'guides/creating-pages',
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Docs',
link: {
type: 'doc',
id: 'guides/docs/introduction',
},
items: [
'guides/docs/create-doc',
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Sidebar',
link: {
type: 'doc',
id: 'guides/docs/sidebar/index',
},
items: [
'guides/docs/sidebar/items',
'guides/docs/sidebar/autogenerated',
'guides/docs/sidebar/multiple-sidebars',
],
},
'guides/docs/versioning',
'guides/docs/multi-instance',
],
},
'blog',
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Markdown Features',
link: {
type: 'doc',
id: 'guides/markdown-features/introduction',
},
items: [
'guides/markdown-features/react',
'guides/markdown-features/tabs',
'guides/markdown-features/code-blocks',
'guides/markdown-features/admonitions',
'guides/markdown-features/toc',
'guides/markdown-features/assets',
'guides/markdown-features/links',
'guides/markdown-features/plugins',
'guides/markdown-features/math-equations',
'guides/markdown-features/diagrams',
'guides/markdown-features/head-metadata',
],
},
'styling-layout',
'swizzling',
'static-assets',
'search',
'browser-support',
'seo',
'using-plugins',
'deployment',
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Internationalization',
link: {type: 'doc', id: 'i18n/introduction'},
items: [
{
type: 'doc',
id: 'i18n/tutorial',
label: 'Tutorial',
},
{
type: 'doc',
id: 'i18n/git',
label: 'Using Git',
},
{
type: 'doc',
id: 'i18n/crowdin',
label: 'Using Crowdin',
},
],
},
'guides/whats-next',
],
},
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Advanced Guides',
link: {type: 'doc', id: 'advanced/index'},
items: [
'advanced/architecture',
'advanced/plugins',
'advanced/routing',
'advanced/ssg',
'advanced/client',
],
},
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Upgrading',
link: {
type: 'doc',
id: 'migration/index',
},
items: [
'migration/v3',
{
type: 'category',
label: 'To Docusaurus v2',
items: [
'migration/v2/migration-overview',
'migration/v2/migration-automated',
'migration/v2/migration-manual',
'migration/v2/migration-versioned-sites',
'migration/v2/migration-translated-sites',
],
},
],
},
],
api: [
'cli',
'docusaurus-core',
{
type: 'autogenerated',
dirName: 'api',
},
],
};
export default sidebars;