Sidebar items
We have introduced three types of item types in the example in the previous section: doc
, category
, and link
, whose usages are fairly intuitive. We will formally introduce their APIs. There's also a fourth type: autogenerated
, which we will explain in detail later.
- Doc: link to a doc page, associating it with the sidebar
- Link: link to any internal or external page
- Category: creates a dropdown of sidebar items
- Autogenerated: generate a sidebar slice automatically
- HTML: renders pure HTML in the item's position
- *Ref: link to a doc page, without making the item take part in navigation generation
Doc: link to a doc
Use the doc
type to link to a doc page and assign that doc to a sidebar:
type SidebarItemDoc =
// Normal syntax
| {
type: 'doc';
id: string;
label: string; // Sidebar label text
className?: string; // Class name for sidebar label
customProps?: Record<string, unknown>; // Custom props
}
// Shorthand syntax
| string; // docId shortcut
Example:
module.exports = {
mySidebar: [
// Normal syntax:
{
type: 'doc',
id: 'doc1', // document ID
label: 'Getting started', // sidebar label
},
// Shorthand syntax:
'doc2', // document ID
],
};
If you use the doc shorthand or autogenerated sidebar, you would lose the ability to customize the sidebar label through item definition. You can, however, use the sidebar_label
Markdown front matter within that doc, which has higher precedence over the label
key in the sidebar item. Similarly, you can use sidebar_custom_props
to declare custom metadata for a doc page.
A doc
item sets an implicit sidebar association. Don't assign the same doc to multiple sidebars: change the type to ref
instead.
Sidebar custom props is a useful way to propagate arbitrary doc metadata to the client side, so you can get additional information when using any doc-related hook that fetches a doc object.
Link: link to any page
Use the link
type to link to any page (internal or external) that is not a doc.
type SidebarItemLink = {
type: 'link';
label: string;
href: string;
className?: string;
description?: string;
};
Example:
module.exports = {
myLinksSidebar: [
// External link
{
type: 'link',
label: 'Facebook', // The link label
href: 'https://facebook.com', // The external URL
},
// Internal link
{
type: 'link',
label: 'Home', // The link label
href: '/', // The internal path
},
],
};
HTML: render custom markup
Use the html
type to render custom HTML within the item's <li>
tag.
This can be useful for inserting custom items such as dividers, section titles, ads, and images.
type SidebarItemHtml = {
type: 'html';
value: string;
defaultStyle?: boolean; // Use default menu item styles
className?: string;
};
Example:
module.exports = {
myHtmlSidebar: [
{
type: 'html',
value: '<img src="sponsor.png" alt="Sponsor" />', // The HTML to be rendered
defaultStyle: true, // Use the default menu item styling
},
],
};
The menu item is already wrapped in an <li>
tag, so if your custom item is simple, such as a title, just supply a string as the value and use the className
property to style it:
module.exports = {
myHtmlSidebar: [
{
type: 'html',
value: 'Core concepts',
className: 'sidebar-title',
},
],
};
Category: create a hierarchy
Use the category
type to create a hierarchy of sidebar items.
type SidebarItemCategory = {
type: 'category';
label: string; // Sidebar label text.
items: SidebarItem[]; // Array of sidebar items.
className?: string;
description?: string;
// Category options:
collapsible: boolean; // Set the category to be collapsible
collapsed: boolean; // Set the category to be initially collapsed or open by default
link: SidebarItemCategoryLinkDoc | SidebarItemCategoryLinkGeneratedIndex;
};
Example:
module.exports = {
docs: [
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Guides',
collapsible: true,
collapsed: false,
items: [
'creating-pages',
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Docs',
items: ['introduction', 'sidebar', 'markdown-features', 'versioning'],
},
],
},
],
};
Use the shorthand syntax when you don't need customizations:
module.exports = {
docs: {
Guides: [
'creating-pages',
{
Docs: ['introduction', 'sidebar', 'markdown-features', 'versioning'],
},
],
},
};
Category links
With category links, clicking on a category can navigate you to another page.
Use category links to introduce a category of documents.
Autogenerated categories can use the _category_.yml
file to declare the link.
Generated index page
You can auto-generate an index page that displays all the direct children of this category. The slug
allows you to customize the generated page's route, which defaults to /category/[categoryName]
.
module.exports = {
docs: [
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Guides',
link: {
type: 'generated-index',
title: 'Docusaurus Guides',
description: 'Learn about the most important Docusaurus concepts!',
slug: '/category/docusaurus-guides',
keywords: ['guides'],
image: '/img/docusaurus.png',
},
items: ['pages', 'docs', 'blog', 'search'],
},
],
};
See it in action on the Docusaurus Guides page.
Use generated-index
links as a quick way to get an introductory document.
Doc link
A category can link to an existing document.
module.exports = {
docs: [
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Guides',
link: {type: 'doc', id: 'introduction'},
items: ['pages', 'docs', 'blog', 'search'],
},
],
};
See it in action on the i18n introduction page.
Embedding generated index in doc page
You can embed the generated cards list in a normal doc page as well with the DocCardList
component. It will display all the sidebar items of the parent category of the current document.
import DocCardList from '@theme/DocCardList';
<DocCardList />
📄️ Sidebar items
We have introduced three types of item types in the example in the previous section autogenerated, which we will explain in detail later.
📄️ 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.
Collapsible categories
We support the option to expand/collapse categories. Categories are collapsible by default, but you can disable collapsing with collapsible: false
.
module.exports = {
docs: [
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Guides',
items: [
'creating-pages',
{
type: 'category',
collapsible: false,
label: 'Docs',
items: ['introduction', 'sidebar', 'markdown-features', 'versioning'],
},
],
},
],
};
To make all categories non-collapsible by default, set the sidebarCollapsible
option in plugin-content-docs
to false
:
module.exports = {
presets: [
[
'@docusaurus/preset-classic',
{
docs: {
sidebarCollapsible: false,
},
},
],
],
};
The option in sidebars.js
takes precedence over plugin configuration, so it is possible to make certain categories collapsible when sidebarCollapsible
is set to false
globally.
Expanded categories by default
Collapsible categories are collapsed by default. If you want them to be expanded on the first render, you can set collapsed
to false
:
module.exports = {
docs: {
Guides: [
'creating-pages',
{
type: 'category',
label: 'Docs',
collapsed: false,
items: ['markdown-features', 'sidebar', 'versioning'],
},
],
},
};