Table of Contents

Table of Contents

A table of contents (TOC) defines the structure of a set of documents.

YAML TOC

To add a TOC, create a file named toc.yml. Here's the structure for a simple YAML TOC:

items:
- name: Tutorial
  items:
  - href: tutorial.md
  - href: step-1.md
  - href: step-2.md
  - href: step-3.md

The YAML document is a tree of TOC nodes, each of which has these properties:

  • name: An optional display name for the TOC node. When not specified, uses the title metadata or the first Heading 1 element from the referenced article as the display name.
  • href: The path the TOC node leads to. Optional because a node can exist just to parent other nodes.
  • items: If a node has children, they're listed in the items array.
  • uid: The uid of the article. Can be used instead of href.
  • expanded: Expand children on load, only works if the template is modern.

When an article is referenced by a TOC through href, the corresponding TOC appears when viewing that article. If multiple TOCs reference the same article, or the article isn't referenced by any TOC, the nearest TOC with the least amount of directory jumps is picked.

The order property can customize this pick logic, TOCs with a smaller order value are picked first. The default order is 0.

order: 100
items:
- ...

Nested TOCs

To nest a TOC within another TOC, set the href property to point to the toc.yml file that you want to nest. You can also use this structure as a way to reuse a TOC structure in one or more TOC files.

Consider the following two toc.yml files:

toc.yml:

items:
- name: Overview
  href: overview.md
- name: Reference
  href: api/toc.yml

api/toc.yml:

items:
- name: System.String
  href: system.string.yml
- name: System.Float
  href: system.float.yml

This structure renders as follows:

Overview
Reference
├─ System.String
├─ System.Float

Nested TOCs by default have order set to 100 to let containing TOCs take precedence.

Reference TOCs

To reference another TOC without embeding it to a parent TOC using nested TOCs, set the href property to point to the directory that you want to reference and end the string with /, this will generate a link pointing to the first article in the referenced TOC.

Consider the following folder structure:

toc.yml
├─ System
    ├─ toc.yml
├─ System.Collections
    ├─ toc.yml

toc.yml:

- name: System
  href: System/
- name: System.Collections
  href: System.Collections/

This structure renders as follows:

System # Link to the first article in System/toc.yml
System.Collections  # Link to the first article in System.Collections/toc.yml

The toc.yml file in the docfx.json folder will be used to fill the content of the navigation bar at the top of the page. It usually uses Reference TOCs to navigate to child pages.

The following example creates a navigation bar with two Docs and API entries:

toc.yml
├─ docs
    ├─ toc.yml
├─ api
    ├─ toc.yml

toc.yml:

- name: Docs
  href: docs/
- name: API
  href: api/
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