Getting Started

Thursday, June 7, 2018 11:42 AM Edit on GitHub

Daux.io is an documentation generator that uses a simple folder structure and Markdown files to create custom documentation on the fly. It helps you create great looking documentation in a developer friendly way.

Table of Contents

Features

For Authors

For Developers

For Marketing

  • 100% Mobile Responsive
  • 4 Built-In Themes or roll your own
  • Functional, Flat Design Style
  • Optional code float layout
  • Shareable/Linkable SEO Friendly URLs
  • Supports Google Analytics and Piwik Analytics

Demos

This is a list of sites using Daux.io:

Do you use Daux.io? Send us a pull request or open an issue and I will add you to the list.

Getting Started

Install

PHP and Composer

If you have PHP and Composer installed, you can install the dependency

composer global require daux/daux.io

# Next to your `docs` folder, run
daux generate

You can then use the daux command line to generate your documentation.

If the command isn't found, ensure your $PATH contains ~/.composer/vendor/bin

Docker

Or if you wish to use Docker, the start of the command will be :

docker run --rm -it -w /build -v "$PWD":/build daux/daux.io daux

Any parameter valid in the PHP version is valid in the Docker version

Writing pages

Creating new pages is very easy:

  1. Create a markdown file (*.md or *.markdown)
  2. Start writing

By default, the generator will look for folders in the docs folder. Add your folders inside the docs folder. This project contains some example folders and files to get you started.

You can nest folders any number of levels to get the exact structure you want. The folder structure will be converted to the nested navigation.

You must use underscores instead of spaces. Here are some example file names and what they will be converted to:

Good:

  • 01_Getting_Started.md = Getting Started
  • API_Calls.md = API Calls
  • 200_Something_Else-Cool.md = Something Else-Cool
  • _5_Ways_to_Be_Happy.md = 5 Ways To Be Happy

Bad:

  • File Name With Space.md = FAIL

See your pages

Now you can see your pages. you have two options for that : serve them directly, or generate to various formats.

We recommend the first one while you write your documentation, you get a much quicker feedback while writing.

Serving files

You can use PHP's embedded web server by running the following command in the root of your documentation

./serve

Upload your files to an apache / nginx server and see your documentation

More informations here

Export to other formats

Daux.io is extendable and comes by default with three export formats:

  • Export to HTML, same as the website, but can be hosted without PHP.
  • Export all documentation in a single HTML page
  • Upload to your Atlassian Confluence server.

See a detailed feature comparison matrix

To export, run the daux command and your documentation will be generated in static (you can change the destination with the --destination option)

See here for all options

Configuration

Now that you got the basics, you can also see what you can configure

PHP Requirements

Daux.io is compatible with PHP 5.6 and up.

The reason is because some dependencies we have do not support php 5.5 anymore.

Extensions

PHP Needs the following extension to work : php-mbstring and php-xml.

If you encounter an error similar to utf8_decode() not found this means that you're missing the php-xml package. (We've seen it happen only on PHP 7)

Known Issues

  • Windows UTF-8 files support Files with UTF-8 characters cannot be handled on windows with PHP5, PHP7 should work fine.

Support

If you need help using Daux.io, or have found a bug, please create an issue on the GitHub repo.