This document provides an overview of the global organization of the documentation resource. Refer to the notes below if you are having trouble understanding the reasoning behind a file's current location, or if you want to add new documentation but aren't sure how to integrate it into the existing resource.
Don't hesitate to open a ticket in the Documentation Jira Project or be in contact with someone on the documentation team if you have any questions.
There are two "index files," for the documentation
project. "/contents.txt
" and "/index.txt
". The "contents" file
provides an index and top level tree of all documentation in the
resource and Sphinx uses this organization to power the "Next" and
"Previous" page functionality and all overarching outlines of the
resource. The "index" file is not included in the "contents" file (and
thus builds will produce a warning here) and is the page that users
will land on first when visiting the resource.
Having separate "contents" and "index" files provides a bit more flexibility with the organization of the resource while also making it possible to customize the primary user experience.
Additionally, in the top level of the "source/
" directory, there
are a number of "topical" index or outline files. These (like the
"index" and "contents" files) use the ".. toctree::
" directive to
provide organization within the documentation. The topical indexes
combine to create the index in the contents file.
Because the documentation on any given subject exists in a number of different locations across the resource the "topical" indexes provide the real structure and organization to the resource. This organization makes it possible to provide great flexibility while still maintaining a reasonable organization of files and URLs for the documentation. Consider the following example:
Given that topic such as "replication," has material regarding the administration of replica sets, as well as reference material, an overview of the functionality, and operational tutorials, it makes more sense to include a few locations for documents, and use the meta documents to provide the topic-level organization.
Current topical indexes include:
- getting-started
- administration
- applications
- reference
- mongo
- sharding
- replication
- faq
Additional topical indexes are forthcoming.
The documentation has a number of top-level folders, that hold all of the content of the resource. Consider the following list and explanations below:
- administration - contains all of the operational and architectural information that systems and database administrators need to know in order to run MongoDB. Topics include: monitoring, replica sets, shard clusters, deployment architectures, and configuration.
- applications - contains information about application development
and use. While most documentation regarding application development
is within the purview of the driver documentation, there are some
larger topics regarding the use of these features that deserve some
coverage in this context. Topics include: drivers, schema design,
optimization, replication, and sharding.
- applications/use-cases - contains use cases that detail how MongoDB can support various kinds uses and application designs, including in depth instructions and examples.
- core - contains overviews and introduction to the core features, functionality, and concepts of MongoDB. Topics include: replication, sharding, capped collections, journaling/durability, aggregation.
- reference - contains references and indexes of shell functions,
database commands, status outputs, as well as manual pages for all
of the programs come with MongoDB (e.g.
mongostat
andmongodump
.) - tutorial - contains operational guides and tutorials that lead users through common tasks (administrative and conceptual) with MongoDB. This includes programming patterns and operational guides.
- faq - contains all the frequently asked questions related to MongoDB, in a collection of topical files.