The Testcontainers for Java documentation is a static site built with MkDocs. We use the Material for MkDocs theme, which offers a number of useful extensions to MkDocs.
In addition we use a custom plugin for inclusion of code snippets.
We publish our documentation using Netlify.
The root of the project contains a docker-compose.yml
file. Simply run docker-compose up
and then access the docs at http://localhost:8000.
- Ensure that you have Python 3.8.0 or higher.
- Set up a virtualenv and run
pip install -r requirements.txt
in thetestcontainers-java
root directory. - Once Python dependencies have been installed, run
mkdocs serve
to start a local auto-updating MkDocs server.
Note that documentation for pull requests will automatically be published by Netlify as 'deploy previews'.
These deployment previews can be accessed via the deploy/netlify
check that appears for each pull request.
The Gradle project under docs/examples
is intended to hold compilable, runnable example code that can be included as
snippets into the documentation at build-time.
As a result, we can have more confidence that code samples shown in the documentation is valid.
We use a custom plugin for MkDocs to include snippets into our docs.
A codeinclude block will resemble a regular markdown link surrounded by a pair of XML comments, e.g.:
<!--codeinclude-->
[Human readable title for snippet](./relative_path_to_example_code.java) targeting_expression
<!--/codeinclude-->
Where targeting_expression
could be:
block:someString
orinside_block:someString
If these are provided, the macro will seek out any line containing the token someString
and grab the next curly brace
delimited block that it finds. block
will grab the starting line and closing brace, whereas inside_block
will omit
these.
e.g., given:
public class FooService {
public void doFoo() {
foo.doSomething();
}
...
If we use block:doFoo
as our targeting expression, we will have the following content included into our page:
public void doFoo() {
foo.doSomething();
}
Whereas using inside_block:doFoo
we would just have the inner content of the method included:
foo.doSomething();
Note that:
- Any code included will be have its indentation reduced
- Every line in the source file will be searched for an instance of the token (e.g.
doFoo
). If more than one line includes that token, then potentially more than one block could be targeted for inclusion. It is advisable to use a specific, unique token to avoid unexpected behaviour.
When we wish to include a section of code that does not naturally appear within braces, we can simply insert our token, with matching braces, in a comment. While a little ugly, this has the benefit of working in any context and is easy to understand. For example:
public class FooService {
public void boringMethod() {
doSomethingBoring();
// doFoo {
doTheThingThatWeActuallyWantToShow();
// }
}