freeCodeCamp/devdocs

Quick Start

Unless you wish to contribute to the project, we recommend using the hosted version at devdocs.io. It's up-to-date and works offline out-of-the-box.

Manual Installation

DevDocs is made of two pieces: a Ruby scraper that generates the documentation and metadata, and a JavaScript app powered by a small Sinatra app.

DevDocs requires Ruby 4.0.7 (defined in Gemfile), libcurl, bsdtar (included in macOS, the libarchive-tools package on Debian and Alpine), and a JavaScript runtime supported by ExecJS (included in OS X and Windows; Node.js on Linux). On Arch Linux run pacman -S ruby ruby-bundler ruby-erb ruby-irb.

Finally, point your browser at localhost:9292 (the first request will take a few seconds to compile the assets). You're all set.

The thor docs:download command is used to download pre-generated documentations from DevDocs's servers (e.g. thor docs:download html css). You can see the list of available documentations and versions by running thor docs:list. To update all downloaded documentations, run thor docs:download --installed. To download and install all documentation this project has available, run thor docs:download --all.

git clone https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/devdocs.git && cd devdocs
gem install bundler
bundle install
bundle exec thor docs:download --default
bundle exec rackup

DevDocs Quick Usage Cheatsheet

Below are some helpful shortcuts and usage tips that are not immediately obvious to new users:

These shortcuts make DevDocs faster to navigate and more efficient for daily use.

• Press / or Ctrl + K to instantly focus the search bar.
• Press ? to open DevDocs’ built-in help overlay.
• Press ↑ or ↓ to navigate search results without touching the mouse.
• Press Enter to open the highlighted search result.
• Press Backspace to go back to the previously viewed page.
• Press Shift + S to toggle the sidebar visibility.
• Press A to open the list of all installed documentation sets.
• Press Esc to close popups, overlays, and search.
• Use the ⚡ Offline Mode toggle to download docs for offline use.
• You can pin specific documentation sets to the sidebar for quicker access.

We are currently searching for maintainers

Please reach out to the community on Discord if you would like to join the team!

• Join the #contributors chat room on Discord
• Watch the repository on GitHub

Vision

DevDocs aims to make reading and searching reference documentation fast, easy and enjoyable.

Note: DevDocs is neither a programming guide nor a search engine. All our content is pulled from third-party sources and the project doesn't intend to compete with full-text search engines. Its backbone is metadata; each piece of content is identified by a unique, "obvious" and short string. Tutorials, guides and other content that don't meet this requirement are outside the scope of the project.

• Keep load times as short as possible
• Improve the quality, speed, and order of search results
• Maximize the use of caching and other performance optimizations
• Maintain a clean and readable user interface
• Be fully functional offline
• Support full keyboard navigation
• Reduce “context switch” by using a consistent typography and design across all documentations
• Reduce clutter by focusing on a specific category of content (API/reference) and indexing only the minimum useful to most developers.

App

The web app is all client-side JavaScript, powered by a small Sinatra/Sprockets application. It relies on files generated by the scraper.

Many of the code's design decisions were driven by the fact that the app uses XHR to load content directly into the main frame. This includes stripping the original documents of most of their HTML markup (e.g. scripts and stylesheets) to avoid polluting the main frame, and prefixing all CSS class names with an underscore to prevent conflicts.

Another driving factor is performance and the fact that everything happens in the browser. A service worker (which comes with its own set of constraints) and localStorage are used to speed up the boot time, while memory consumption is kept in check by allowing the user to pick his/her own set of documentations. The search algorithm is kept simple because it needs to be fast even searching through 100,000 strings.

DevDocs being a developer tool, the browser requirements are high:

• Recent versions of Firefox, Chrome, or Opera
• Safari 16.4+