caitlindavey / docs

Ably Realtime API documentation

Ably Documentation

Ably is the platform that powers synchronized digital experiences in realtime. Whether attending an event in a virtual venue, receiving realtime financial information, or monitoring live car performance data – consumers simply expect realtime digital experiences as standard. Ably provides a suite of APIs to build, extend, and deliver powerful digital experiences in realtime for more than 250 million devices across 80 countries each month. Organizations like Bloomberg, HubSpot, Verizon, and Hopin depend on Ably’s platform to offload the growing complexity of business-critical realtime data synchronization at global scale.

New Toolchain: Gatsby Documentation Repository

This is a static site generated using Gatsby and documentation written in:

• Textile - Held in the ./content folders, enhanced with certain additional features described in ./content/client-lib-development-guide/documentation-formatting-guide.textile

• https://docs.ably.com: A static site which always reflects the latest version of the contents of this repository, being deployed automatically when the main branch is updated.

• https://ably.com/docs: Our official documentation, which points to a specific version of this repository. Changes in this repo are not automatically reflected in the official docs, but require intervention by the Ably website team.

Run

Install node & npm.

If you use ASDF or compatible tooling to manage your Ruby runtime versions, we have included a .tool-versions file. Note that if you brew installed your asdf installation instead of git cloneing it, npm may not be installed correctly.

npm i

If Gatsby CLI is not already installed:

npm install -g gatsby-cli

Editors:

npm run edit

Developers:

To develop locally run either:

1. npm run develop
2. gatsby clean && gatsby develop

Visit localhost:8000 for homepage.

Visit localhost:8000/docs/${relativePath} for documentation pages, e.g. localhost:8000/docs/client-lib-development-guide/documentation-formatting-guide.

To build and serve locally run either:

1. gatsby clean && gatsby build --prefix-paths && gatsby serve --prefix-paths
2. npm run rebuild

Visit localhost:9000 for homepage.

Redirects

Redirects are currently implemented using Gatsby's in-built redirect functionality.

To set up a redirect, add the following to the frontmatter of the page that you want to be the destination of the redirect:

redirect_from:
  - /redirect-from-this-path/

You can also add a single redirect, however while this is supported it is not the principal way to add redirects; adding a YAML array, as shown above, is the most stable and predictable way to add a redirect.

redirect_from: /redirect-from-this-single-path/

If a redirect is not already prepended with /docs, /docs will be prepended to the redirect source URL; if you need a redirect from the main website to a docs page, Gatsby currently cannot handle this.

Otherwise, the redirect will be left intact.

Redirects added in this way are also added to a file at ./config/nginx-redirects.conf, and used to create a map of nginx redirects at build time.

Other one-off instances of redirects may be added to additional config files, and imported in a similar way. See:

• ./config/website-redirects.conf
• ./config/client-lib-development-guide-redirects.conf
• ./config/nginx.conf.erb

For how to create and include these redirects.

Environment Variables

Note that any env variables needed to show in the browser must be prefixed with GATSBY_ in order to appear.

• GATSBY_DOCS_SIGNED_IN - set to any string to force the application to behave as though you are logged in
• GATSBY_DOCS_API_KEYS - set to any string to force the application to behave as though you have API keys available
• GATSBY_ABLY_MAIN_WEBSITE - the URL from which basic user data and API keys can be retrieved, and from which we can generate sitemap links and so on

Place these in .env.development to run locally.

Further Information

Documentation is included throughout this repository in the form of README.md files at folder level. These are intended to:

1. Aid navigation through the repository, so documentation contributors and developers can easily see if they are in the right place
2. Support documentation contributors in understanding the expected results from their work
3. Explain the thinking behind the application structure and conscious choices made, so that improvements can be made with increased confidence when a wrong choice has been made
   1. Ensure that where there is an alternative option, especially an obvious alternative option, the reasons for not selecting that option are made clear
4. Support new & external developers in quickly understanding how separate parts of the application are expected to work

We have selected folder-level README files instead of the alternative of a dedicated documentation folder because we think it enables points 1 and 4 more directly, especially with the support from GitHub. The aim is to make browsing the repository much more clear even if you have no context for the repository.

Optional Setup Steps

If you would like to run linting and tests automatically before every commit and run npm install automatically after every branch checkout, run npm run repo-githooks. If you would like to remove this behaviour, run npm run no-githooks.

To understand the data ingestion and parsing steps, please check the READMEs in the /data folder.

Help and contact

If you have any questions or suggestions, please get in touch.