Documentation Format¶
The Superdesk Publisher documentation uses reStructuredText as its markup language and Sphinx for generating the documentation in the formats read by the end users, such as HTML and PDF.
reStructuredText¶
reStructuredText is a plaintext markup syntax similar to Markdown, but much stricter with its syntax. If you are new to reStructuredText, take some time to familiarize with this format by reading the existing Superdesk Publisher documentation source code.
If you want to learn more about this format, check out the reStructuredText Primer tutorial and the reStructuredText Reference.
Caution
If you are familiar with Markdown, be careful as things are sometimes very similar but different:
- Lists starts at the beginning of a line (no indentation is allowed);
- Inline code blocks use double-ticks (
``like this``
).
Sphinx¶
Sphinx is a build system that provides tools to create documentation from reStructuredText documents. As such, it adds new directives and interpreted text roles to the standard reST markup. Read more about the Sphinx Markup Constructs.
Syntax Highlighting¶
PHP is the default syntax highlighter applied to all code blocks. You can
change it with the code-block
directive:
1 2 3 | .. code-block:: yaml
{ foo: bar, bar: { foo: bar, bar: baz } }
|
Note
Besides all of the major programming languages, the syntax highlighter supports all kinds of markup and configuration languages. Check out the list of supported languages on the syntax highlighter website.
Configuration Blocks¶
Whenever you include a configuration sample, use the configuration-block
directive to show the configuration in all supported configuration formats
(PHP
, YAML
and XML
). Example:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 | .. configuration-block::
.. code-block:: yaml
# Configuration in YAML
.. code-block:: xml
<!-- Configuration in XML -->
.. code-block:: php
// Configuration in PHP
|
The previous reST snippet renders as follow:
- YAML
1
# Configuration in YAML
- XML
1
<!-- Configuration in XML -->
- PHP
1
// Configuration in PHP
The current list of supported formats are the following:
Markup Format | Use It to Display |
---|---|
html |
HTML |
xml |
XML |
php |
PHP |
yaml |
YAML |
twig |
Pure Twig markup |
html+twig |
Twig markup blended with HTML |
html+php |
PHP code blended with HTML |
ini |
INI |
php-annotations |
PHP Annotations |
Adding Links¶
The most common type of links are internal links to other documentation pages, which use the following syntax:
1 | :doc:`/absolute/path/to/page`
|
The page name should not include the file extension (.rst
). For example:
1 2 3 4 5 | :doc:`/book/controller`
:doc:`/components/event_dispatcher/introduction`
:doc:`/cookbook/configuration/environments`
|
The title of the linked page will be automatically used as the text of the link. If you want to modify that title, use this alternative syntax:
1 | :doc:`Spooling Email </cookbook/email/spool>`
|
Note
Although they are technically correct, avoid the use of relative internal links such as the following, because they break the references in the generated PDF documentation:
1 2 3 4 5 | :doc:`controller`
:doc:`event_dispatcher/introduction`
:doc:`environments`
|
Links to the API follow a different syntax, where you must specify the type
of the linked resource (namespace
, class
or method
):
1 2 3 4 5 | :namespace:`SWP\\Component\\MultiTenancy`
:class:`SWP\\Component\\MultiTenancy\\Context\\TenantContext`
:method:`SWP\\Component\\MultiTenancy\\Context\\TenantContext::setTenant`
|
Links to the PHP documentation follow a pretty similar syntax:
1 2 3 4 5 | :phpclass:`SimpleXMLElement`
:phpmethod:`DateTime::createFromFormat`
:phpfunction:`iterator_to_array`
|
New Features or Behaviour Changes¶
If you’re documenting a brand new feature or a change that’s been made in
Superdesk Publisher, you should precede your description of the change with a
.. versionadded:: 2.X
directive and a short description:
1 2 3 4 | .. versionadded:: 2.3
The ``askHiddenResponse`` method was introduced in Superdesk Publisher 2.3.
You can also ask a question and hide the response. This is particularly [...]
|
If you’re documenting a behaviour change, it may be helpful to briefly describe how the behaviour has changed:
1 2 3 | .. versionadded:: 2.3
The ``include()`` function is a new MultiTenancy feature that's available in
Superdesk Publisher 2.3. Prior, the ``{% include %}`` tag was used.
|
At this point, all the versionadded
tags for Superdesk Publisher versions that have
reached end-of-maintenance will be removed. For example, if Superdesk Publisher 2.5 were
released today, and 2.2 had recently reached its end-of-life, the 2.2 versionadded
tags would be removed from the new 2.5
branch.
Testing Documentation¶
When submitting new content to the documentation repository or when changing any existing resource, an automatic process will check if your documentation is free of syntax errors and is ready to be reviewed.
Nevertheless, if you prefer to do this check locally on your own machine before submitting your documentation, follow these steps:
- Install Sphinx;
- Install the Sphinx extensions using git submodules:
git submodule update --init
; - Run
make html
and view the generated HTML in the_build/html
directory.