Host your docs. Simple. Versioned. Fancy.

Why DOCAT?

When generating static documentation using mkdocs, sphinx, ... hosting just one version of the docs might not be enough. Many users might still use older versions and might need to read those versions of the documentation.

Docat solves this problem by providing a simple tool that hosts multiple documentation projects with multiple versions.

The main design decision with docat was to keep the tool as simple as possible.

Getting started

The simplest way to get started is to run the docker container, you can optionally use volumes to persist state:

# run container in background and persist data (docs, nginx configs and tokens database)
# use 'ghcr.io/docat-org/docat:unstable' to get the latest changes
mkdir -p docat-run/doc
docker run \
  --detach \
  --volume $PWD/docat-run:/var/docat/ \
  --publish 8000:80 \
  ghcr.io/docat-org/docat

Go to localhost:8000 to view your docat instance:

Using DOCAT

🛈 Please note that docat does not provide any way to write documentation. It's sole responsibility is to host documentation.

There are many awesome tools to write documenation:

• mkdocs
• sphinx
• mdbook
• ...

A CLI tool called docatl is available for easy interaction with the docat server. However, interacting with docat can also be done through curl.

To push documentation (and tag as latest) in the folder docs/ simply run:

docatl push --host http://localhost:8000 ./docs PROJECT VERSION --tag latest

More detailed instructions can be found in the getting started guide.

Authentication

By default, anyone can upload new documentation or add a new version to documentation. A project can be claimed. A claim returns a token that then must be used to add or delete versions.

When hosting docat publicly, it is recommended to use http basic auth for all POST/PUT and DELETE http calls.

docat http basic authentication example

This example shows how to configure the NGINX inside the docker image to be password protected using http basic auth.

1. Create your .htpasswd file.
2. And a custom default NGINX config:

upstream python_backend {
    server 127.0.0.1:5000;
}

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server;

    root /var/www/html;

    add_header Content-Security-Policy "frame-ancestors 'self';";
    index index.html index.htm index.pdf /index.html;

    server_name _;

    location /doc {
        root /var/docat;
    }

    location /api {
        limit_except GET HEAD {
            auth_basic 'Restricted';
            auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/.htpasswd;
        }

        client_max_body_size $MAX_UPLOAD_SIZE;
        proxy_pass http://python_backend;
    }

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}

1. Mounted to the correct location inside the container:

docker run \
  --detach \
  --volume $PWD/docat-run:/var/docat/ \
  --volume $PWD/nginx/default:/app/docat/docat/nginx/default \
  --volume $PWD/nginx/.htpasswd:/etc/nginx/.htpasswd \
  --publish 8000:80 \
  ghcr.io/docat-org/docat

Configuring DOCAT

Frontend Config

It is possible to configure some things after the fact.

1. Create a config.json file
2. Mount it inside your docker container --volume $PWD/config.json:/var/docat/doc/config.json

Supported config options:

{
  "headerHTML": "<h1 style='color: #115fbf;'>Custom Header HTML!</h1>",
  "footerHTML": "CONTACT: <a href='mailto:maintainer@mail.invalid'>Maintainers</a>"
}

System Config

Further proxy configurations can be done through the following environmental variables:

Variable	Default	Description
MAX_UPLOAD_SIZE	100M	Limits the size of individual archives posted to the API

Local Development

For local development, first configure and start the backend (inside the docat/ folder):

# create a folder for local development (uploading docs)
DEV_DOCAT_PATH="$(mktemp -d)"

# install dependencies
poetry install

# run the local development version
DOCAT_SERVE_FILES=1 DOCAT_STORAGE_PATH="$DEV_DOCAT_PATH" poetry run python -m docat

After this you need to start the frontend (inside the web/ folder):

# install dependencies
yarn install --frozen-lockfile

# run the web app
yarn serve

For more advanced options, have a look at the backend and web docs.