Repository files navigation

DevDocs combines multiple developer documentations in a clean and organized web UI with instant search, offline support, mobile version, dark theme, keyboard shortcuts, and more.

DevDocs was created byThibaut Courouble and is operated byfreeCodeCamp.

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

Keep track of development news:

• Join the devdocs chat room onDiscord
• Watch the repository onGitHub
• Follow@DevDocs on Twitter

Table of Contents:Quick Start ·Vision ·App ·Scraper ·Commands ·Contributing ·Documentation ·Related Projects ·License ·Questions?

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

The easiest way to run DevDocs locally is using Docker:

docker run --name devdocs -d -p 9292:9292 ghcr.io/freecodecamp/devdocs:latest

This will start DevDocs atlocalhost:9292. We provide both regular and Alpine-based images:

• ghcr.io/freecodecamp/devdocs:latest - Standard image
• ghcr.io/freecodecamp/devdocs:latest-alpine - Alpine-based (smaller size)

Images are automatically built and updated monthly with the latest documentation.

Alternatively, you can build the image yourself:

git clone https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/devdocs.git&&cd devdocsdocker build -t devdocs.docker run --name devdocs -d -p 9292:9292 devdocs

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 3.4.1 (defined inGemfile), libcurl, and a JavaScript runtime supported byExecJS (included in OS X and Windows;Node.js on Linux). Once you have these installed, run the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/devdocs.git&&cd devdocsgem install bundlerbundle installbundleexec thor docs:download --defaultbundleexec rackup

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

Thethor 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 runningthor docs:list. To update all downloaded documentations, runthor docs:download --installed. To download and install all documentation this project has available, runthor docs:download --all.

Note: there is currently no update mechanism other thangit pull origin main to update the code andthor docs:download --installed to download the latest version of the docs. To stay informed about new releases, be sure towatch this repository.

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

The app's main goals are to:

• 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.

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.

The web app is all client-side JavaScript, powered by a smallSinatra/Sprockets application. It relies on files generated by thescraper.

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) andlocalStorage 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 11.1+
• Edge 17+
• iOS 11.3+

This allows the code to take advantage of the latest DOM and HTML5 APIs and make developing DevDocs a lot more fun!

The scraper is responsible for generating the documentation and index files (metadata) used by theapp. It's written in Ruby under theDocs module.

There are currently two kinds of scrapers:UrlScraper which downloads files via HTTP andFileScraper which reads them from the local filesystem. They both make copies of HTML documents, recursively following links that match a set of rules and applying all sorts of modifications along the way, in addition to building an index of the files and their metadata. Documents are parsed usingNokogiri.

Modifications made to each document include:

• removing content such as the document structure (<html>,<head>, etc.), comments, empty nodes, etc.
• fixing links (e.g. to remove duplicates)
• replacing all external (not scraped) URLs with their fully qualified counterpart
• replacing all internal (scraped) URLs with their unqualified and relative counterpart
• adding content, such as a title and link to the original document
• ensuring correct syntax highlighting usingPrism

These modifications are applied via a set of filters using theHTML::Pipeline library. Each scraper includes filters specific to itself, one of which is tasked with figuring out the pages' metadata.

The end result is a set of normalized HTML partials and two JSON files (index + offline data). Because the index files are loaded separately by theapp following the user's preferences, the scraper also creates a JSON manifest file containing information about the documentations currently available on the system (such as their name, version, update date, etc.).

More information aboutscrapers andfilters is available in thedocs folder.

The command-line interface usesThor. To see all commands and options, runthor list from the project's root.

# Serverrackup# Start the server (ctrl+c to stop)rackup --help# List server options# Docsthor docs:list# List available documentationsthor docs:download# Download one or more documentationsthor docs:manifest# Create the manifest file used by the appthor docs:generate# Generate/scrape a documentationthor docs:page# Generate/scrape a documentation pagethor docs:package# Package a documentation for use with docs:downloadthor docs:clean# Delete documentation packages# Consolethor console# Start a REPLthor console:docs# Start a REPL in the "Docs" module# Tests can be run quickly from within the console using the "test" command.# Run "help test" for usage instructions.thor test:all# Run all teststhor test:docs# Run "Docs" teststhor test:app# Run "App" tests# Assetsthor assets:compile# Compile assets (not required in development mode)thor assets:clean# Clean old assets

If multiple versions of Ruby are installed on your system, commands must be run throughbundle exec.

Contributions are welcome. Please read thecontributing guidelines.

• Adding documentations to DevDocs
• Scraper Reference
• Filter Reference
• Maintainers’ Guide

Made something cool? Feel free to open a PR to add a new row to this table! You might want to discover new projects viahttps://github.com/topics/devdocs.

Project	Description	Last commit	Stars
yannickglt/alfred-devdocs	Alfred workflow
Merith-TK/devdocs_webapp_kotlin	Android application
gruehle/dev-docs-viewer	Brackets extension
egoist/devdocs-desktop	Electron application
skeeto/devdocs-lookup	Emacs function
astoff/devdocs.el	Emacs viewer
naquad/devdocs-shell	GTK shell with Vim integration
hardpixel/devdocs-desktop	GTK application
qwfy/doc-browser	Linux application
dteoh/devdocs-macos	macOS application
Sublime Text plugin	Sublime Text plugin
mohamed3nan/DevDocs-Tab	VS Code extension (view as tab)
deibit/vscode-devdocs	VS Code extension (open the browser)
mdh34/quickDocs	Vala/Python based viewer
girishji/devdocs.vim	Vim plugin & TUI (browse inside Vim)
romainl/vim-devdocs	Vim plugin
waiting-for-dev/vim-www	Vim plugin
emmanueltouzery/apidocs.nvim	Neovim plugin
toiletbril/dedoc	Terminal based viewer
Raycast Devdocs	Raycast extension	Unavailable	Unavailable
chrisgrieser/alfred-docs-searches	Alfred workflow

Copyright 2013–2025 Thibaut Courouble andother contributors

This software is licensed under the terms of the Mozilla Public License v2.0. See theCOPYRIGHT andLICENSE files.

Please do not use the name DevDocs to endorse or promote products derived from this software without the maintainers' permission, except as may be necessary to comply with the notice/attribution requirements.

We also wish that any documentation file generated using this software be attributed to DevDocs. Let's be fair to all contributors by giving credit where credit's due. Thanks!

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them on the contributor chat room onDiscord.