Quick Start

Build your technical documentation site with docfx. Converts .NET assembly, XML code comment, REST API Swagger files and markdown into rendered HTML pages, JSON model or PDF files.

Create a New Website

In this section we will build a simple documentation site on your local machine.

Prerequisites

  • Familiarity with the command line
  • Install .NET SDK 6.0 or higher

Make sure you have .NET SDK installed, then open a terminal and enter the following command to install the latest docfx:

dotnet tool update -g docfx

To create a new docset, run:

docfx init --quiet

This command creates a new docset under the docfx_project directory. To build the docset, run:

docfx docfx_project/docfx.json --serve

Now you can preview the website on http://localhost:8080.

To preview your local changes, save changes then run this command in a new terminal to rebuild the website:

docfx docfx_project/docfx.json

Publish to GitHub Pages

Docfx produces static HTML files under the _site folder ready for publishing to any static site hosting servers.

To publish to GitHub Pages:

  1. Enable GitHub Pages.
  2. Upload _site folder to GitHub Pages using GitHub actions.

This example uses peaceiris/actions-gh-pages to publish to the gh-pages branch:

# Your GitHub workflow file under .github/workflows/

jobs:
  publish-docs:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v3
    with:
        dotnet-version: 6.x

    - run: dotnet install -g docfx
    - run: docfx docs/docfx.json

    - name: Deploy
    uses: peaceiris/actions-gh-pages@v3
    with:
        github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        publish_dir: docs/_site

Use the NuGet Library

You can also use docfx as a NuGet library:

<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.DocAsCode.App" Version="2.60.0" />

Then build a docset using:

await Microsoft.DocAsCode.Docset.Build("docfx.json");

See API References for additional APIs.

Next Steps