General rules and guidance for adding docs

This document describes the directory structure, templates, front matter, and versioning of Spryker documentation.

Directory structure

The main directory for holding all the documents is docs at the root of the project. The second layer is product directories: marketplace, scos, cloud, etc. Under each product directory, there are realm directories: user and dev. Each of these directories contains category directories with optional sub-categories. Category or sub-category directories contain documents. Some categories are versioned to reflect differences for various releases, so each version of the sub-category is located in a separate folder, for example, see Features. For more details on versioning pages, see Working with versions.

Creating documents and categories

We use Markdown (.md) to write documents. All documents reside in the docs directory. For details about how this directory is organized, see Directory structure. You can use any text editor for creating the files in Markdown, like VSCode. For information about specific Markdown syntax for documentation, see Markdown syntax.

You can create new pages in any documentation category or sub-category under the realm directories (user, dev). You can also create directories for new categories under the realm directories.

For example, to create a new sample-category category and a foo-bar page under it for a marketplace business user, you create a new directory called sample-category under /docs/marketplace/user. After that, create the file foo-bar.md in that directory. Thus, the path to your new page is /docs/marketplace/user/sample-category/foo-bar.md.

Templates

To keep our docs consistent, we have templates for all types of documents. The templates are stored in the [_templates](https://github.com/spryker/spryker-docs/tree/master/_templates) directory. Therefore, every time you need to create a new document, pick the right template from this folder, copy it to your new page, and write the document based on the structure of the template and instructions therein.

Front matter

Every document must have a YAML front matter block. This block consists of key-value pairs delimited by 3 dashes from each side and must come before any content in the document. The supported parameters on our documentation website are:

---
title: Foo bar document
description: Exemplary description text.
last_updated: Dec 09, 2021
template: concept-topic-template
tags: [new, B2B, B2C]
redirect_from:
	-/docs/cloud/dev/spryker-cloud-commerce-os/troubleshooting.html
	-/docs/marketplace/dev/feature-integration-guides/202108.0/combined-product-offer-import-integration.html
related:
	- title: How to extend an existing Gui table
		link: docs/marketplace/dev/howtos/how-to-extend-gui-table.html
  - title: Install the Sales Data Export feature
    link: docs/pbc/all/order-management-system/page.version/base-shop/install-and-upgrade/install-features/install-the-sales-data-export-feature.html
---

For more information about front matter, see the Jekyll’s official website.

Adding documents to the navigation

After creating a new document, you must add it to the sidebar navigation. Keep in mind that a path to a document file is fully mapped to the URL of that document except that, .md is replaced with .html. This means that the document from the preceding example can be accessed in the browser with zero configuration by visiting http://localhost:4000/docs/marketplace/user/sample-category/foo-bar.html.

Sidebars

Each product/realm set has its own sidebar, which is represented by a YAML file in the [_data/sidebar](https://github.com/spryker/spryker-docs/tree/master/_data/sidebars) directory. The sidebar name is {product}_{realm}_sidebar.yml. So, for example, for the marketplace user documentation, the sidebar file is called marketplace_user_sidebar.html. The sidebar consists of the list of files that are present in the navigation. As a best practice, as soon as you create a new page, add it to your sidebar (so you don’t forget about the page).

- product: SCOS
  nested:
  - title: Sample category
    nested:
    - title: Intro to Spryker
      url: /docs/scos/user/sample-category/foo-bar.html

• The product key represents the top level category for the sidebar. It is entered once at the top of the sidebar.
• The nested key describes the nested items of the category—pages or sub-categories.
• The first title key sets the category name as it will be displayed in the sidebar.
• The second title key in this example sets the page title.
• The url key must specify the absolute URL to the document page.

Creating landing pages for the main categories

For each main category, like Setup, Feature integration guides, or HowTos, you can create an index.md. file. This lets you open category pages without specific files in the link. For example, let’s do that for the Glue API guides section of the developer guide:

1. In docs/marketplace/dev/glue-api-guides, add the index.md file. Make sure you specify the title in the file.
2. In the marketplace_dev_sidebar.yml file, add the URL for the Glue API guides element. You don’t have to write index.html at the end of the link, the link works without it:

- title: Glue API guides         
  url: /docs/marketplace/dev/glue-api-guides/

3. Save the changes.

If you open the Glue API guides category, your page looks like this:

Working with versions

We have two types of versions: page versions and the global website version.

The versions are managed in the config.yml file.

Page version

The page version is the version of the current page. Therefore, page versions apply to the versioned pages only. The page versions reside in the version-related scopes section of the config.yml file:

To add a new version for the versioned categories:

1. In the config.yml file, in the version-related scopes section, add the version with the scope and values parameters as shown in the picture above.
2. In the main categories for which the version you added should exist, create the folder named as the version value from the previous step. For example, if you created version 202221.0 in config.yml > version-related scopes, the folder must also be called 202221.0.
3. Add the file that must be in the new version, to the folder:

You can make a reference to the currently opened version of the versioned page using the {{page.version}} variable in text and links. For example, if you open a document in version 202108.0 in the editor and write there the following:

This feature requires version  of the Merchants feature.
For details on the feature, see [Merchant feature overview](/docs/marketplace/user/features/{{page.version}}/merchants/merchants-feature-overview.html).

On the website, your text looks like this:

This feature requires version 202108.0 of the Merchants feature.
For details on the feature, see Merchant feature overview(link to merchants-feature-overview.html version 202108.0).

Global site version

The global version is the main website version. Usually, we make the version of the latest release the main website version. The global version is applied to both versioned and unversioned pages. It is specified in the first line of the config.yml file:

To make a reference to the main (last) website version on either versioned or unversioned pages, use {{site.version}}. For example, if the main version of your website is 2020109.0, if you write the following

For details on the feature, see [Merchant feature overview](/docs/marketplace/user/features/{{site.version}}/merchants/merchants-feature-overview.html).

the Merchant feature overview link takes the user to the Merchant feature overview article in version 2020109.0.

Deleting pages

To delete an unnecessary or outdated page from the website, make sure to set up a redirect for it. To learn how to set up redirects, see Front matter.

Troubleshooting

This section contains most coming issues that you may face while working with docs and expected ways how to resolve the problem.

Filename too long in Git for Windows

If you face the “Filename too long” error, or an error like this one “spryker.github.io/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.7.0/gems/jekyll-4.2.0/lib/jekyll/convertible.rb:222:in `write’: No such file or directory @ rb_sysopen - E:/Jekyll/spryker.github.io/_site/docs/pbc/all/search/202410.0/base-shop/tutorials-and-howtos/tutorial-content-and-search-attribute-cart-based-catalog-personalization/tutorial-content-and-search-attribute-cart-based-catalog-personalization.html (Errno::ENOENT)”, run the following command to circumvent it:

git config --system core.longpaths true

This command only solves the problem by being specific to the current project.

Escaping Liquid template tags

Jekyll supports a Liquid templating system. All features can be found on page Liquid.

Beware that Liquid syntax uses the same tags as Twig. To prevent Twig tags processing use * //Twig template *.

If your page requires a Twig code sample to be inserted, enter the above-mentioned placeholder at the beginning and at the end of the code sample. Example:

To get rid of the extra lines in the code sample, use the code sample placeholder.