Host your docs. Simple. Versioned. Fancy.

Getting started

The simplest way is to build and run the docker container, you can optionally use volumes to persist state:

# run container in background and persist data (docs, nginx configs and tokens database)


use 'ghcr.io/docat-org/docat:unstable' to get the latest changes

mkdir -p docat-run/doc
docker run \
  --detach \
  --volume $PWD/docat-run:/var/docat/ \
  --publish 8000:80 \
  ghcr.io/docat-org/docat

Go to localhost:8000 to view your docat instance:

Local Development

For local development, first configure and start the backend (inside the docat/ folder):

# create a folder for local development (uploading docs)
DEV_DOCAT_PATH="$(mktemp -d)"


install dependencies

poetry install

run the local development version

DOCAT_SERVE_FILES=1 DOCAT_STORAGE_PATH="$DEV_DOCAT_PATH" poetry run python -m docat

After this you need to start the frontend (inside the web/ folder):

# install dependencies
yarn install --frozen-lockfile


run the web app

yarn serve

For more advanced options, have a look at the backend and web docs.

Push Documentation to docat

The preferred way to push documentation to a docat server is using the docatl command line application:

docatl push --host http://localhost:8000 /path/to/your/docs PROJECT VERSION

There are also docker images available for CI systems.

Using Standard UNIX Command Line Tools

If you have static html documentation or use something like mkdocs, sphinx, ... to generate your documentation, you can push it to docat:

# create a zip of your docs
zip -r docs.zip /path/to/your-docs


upload them to the docat server (replace PROJECT/VERSION with your projectname and the version of the docs)

curl -X POST -F "file=@docs.zip" http://localhost:8000/api/PROJECT/VERSION

When you have multiple versions you may want to tag some version as latest:

# tag the version VERSION of project PROJECT as latest
curl -X PUT http://localhost:8000/api/PROJECT/VERSION/tags/latest

Same thing with docatl:

# tag the version VERSION of project PROJECT as latest
docatl tag --host http://localhost:8000 PROJECT VERSION latest

It is possible to configure some things after the fact.

1. Create a config.json file
2. Mount it inside your docker container --volume /path/to/config.json:/var/www/html/config.json

Supported config options:

• headerHTML

Advanced Usage Hide Controls

If you would like to send link to a specific version of the documentation without the option to change the version, you can do so by clicking on the Hide Controls button. This will hide the control buttons and change the link, which can then be copied as usual.