Sidebar

To generate a sidebar to your Docusaurus site, you need to define a file that exports a sidebar object and pass that into the @docusaurus/plugin-docs plugin directly or via @docusaurus/preset-classic.

// docusaurus.config.js
module.exports = {
  // ...
  presets: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/preset-classic',
      {
        docs: {
          // Sidebars filepath relative to the site dir.
          sidebarPath: require.resolve('./sidebars.js'),
        },
        ...
      },
    ],
  ],
};

Sidebar object

A sidebar object is defined like this.

type Sidebar = {
  [sidebarId: string]:
    | {
        [sidebarCategory: string]: SidebarItem[];
      }
    | SidebarItem[];
};

Below is an example of a sidebar object. The key docs is the id of the sidebar (can be renamed to something else) and Getting Started is a category within the sidebar. greeting and doc1 are both sidebar item.

// sidebars.js
module.exports = {
  docs: {
    'Getting started': ['greeting'],
    Docusaurus: ['doc1'],
  },
};

If you don't want to rely on iteration order of JavaScript object keys for the category name, the following sidebar object is also equivalent of the above.

// sidebars.js
module.exports = {
  docs: [
    {
      type: 'category',
      label: 'Getting Started',
      items: ['greeting'],
    },
    {
      type: 'category',
      label: 'Docusaurus',
      items: ['doc1'],
    },
  ],
};

You can also have multiple sidebars for different Markdown files by adding more top-level keys to the exported object.

Example:

// sidebars.js
module.exports = {
  firstSidebar: {
    'Category A': ['doc1'],
  },
  secondSidebar: {
    'Category A': ['doc2'],
    'Category B': ['doc3'],
  },
};

Document ID

Every document has a unique id. By default, a document id is the name of the document (without the extension) relative to the root docs directory.

For example, greeting.md id is greeting and guide/hello.md id is guide/hello.

website # root directory of your site
└── docs
   ├── greeting.md
   └── guide
      └── hello.md

However, the last part of the id can be defined by user in the frontmatter. For example, if guide/hello.md content is defined as below, it's final id is guide/part1.

---
id: part1
---
Lorem ipsum

Sidebar item

As the name implies, SidebarItem is an item defined in a Sidebar. There are a few types we support:

• Doc
• Link
• Ref
• Category

Doc

type SidebarItemDoc =
  | string
  | {
      type: 'doc';
      id: string;
    };

Sidebar item type that links to a doc page. Example:

{
  type: 'doc',
  id: 'doc1', // string - document id
}

Using just the Document ID is perfectly valid as well, the following is equivalent to the above:

'doc1'; // string - document id

Note that using this type will bind the linked doc to current sidebar, this means that if you access doc1 page, the sidebar displayed will be the sidebar this item is on. For below case, doc1 is bounded to firstSidebar.

// sidebars.js
module.exports = {
  firstSidebar: {
    'Category A': ['doc1'],
  },
  secondSidebar: {
    'Category A': ['doc2'],
    'Category B': ['doc3'],
  },
};

Link

type SidebarItemLink = {
  type: 'link';
  label: string;
  href: string;
};

Sidebar item type that links to a non-document page. Example:

{
  type: 'link',
  label: 'Custom Label', // string - the label that should be displayed.
  href: 'https://example.com' // string - the target URL.
}

Ref

type SidebarItemRef = {
  type: 'ref';
  id: string;
};

Sidebar item type that links to doc without bounding it to the sidebar. Example:

{
  type: 'ref',
  id: 'doc1', // string - document id
}

Category

This is used to add hierarchies to the sidebar:

type SidebarItemCategory = {
  type: 'category';
  label: string; // Sidebar label text.
  items: SidebarItem[]; // Array of sidebar items.
};

As an example, here's how we created the subcategory for "Docs" under "Guides" in this site:

// sidebars.js
module.exports = {
  docs: {
    Guides: [
      'creating-pages',
      {
        type: 'category',
        label: 'Docs',
        items: ['markdown-features', 'sidebar'],
      },
    ],
  },
};

Collapsible categories

For sites with a sizable amount of content, we support the option to expand/collapse a category to toggle the display of its contents. Categories are collapsible by default. If you want them to be always expanded, set themeConfig.sidebarCollapsible to false:

// docusaurus.config.js
module.exports = {
  ...
  themeConfig: {
    sidebarCollapsible: false,
    ...
  },
}