Branch Docs

Repository for Branch's public documentation https://docs.branch.io

Goal

• Get partners up and running as fast as possible

  • Educate with a single best path (do not list all the override methods)

  • Educate with working code examples

  • Bullet point key points, procedures, and steps to promote progression

  • Use shorter sentences with simpler words (3rd grade) to prevent ambiguity

  • Trigger action by beginning each sentence with a verb

  • Write in the viewpoint of the user's wants, not what Branch wants

  • Keep it simple (KISS) (1 -> 2 -> 3)

  • Don't repeat yourself (DRY) (this can be found here)

• Answer any question a partner will have

  • Make sure you answer why, what, how (example) with each section

Environment

• Code

  git clone [email protected]:branchmetrics/docs.git
  cd docs

• Dependencies

  pip install -r requirements.txt

• Develop

  mkdocs serve
  open http://127.0.0.1:8000

• Deploy

  • Merge pull request into master
  • Create new pull request from master
  • Merge pull request from master into production on release days

• Staging

  • 3 staging environments
    • staging
      • http://staging.docs.branch.io.s3-website-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/
    • staging2
      • http://staging2docs.branch.io.s3-website-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/
    • staging3
      • http://staging3docs.branch.io.s3-website-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/
  • To deploy to a staging environment, prepend one of the staging names to your branch; e.g. staging3-mybranch
    • once the branch exists in Github, it will auto-deploy to the correct staging environment; no merging required.

• Production

  • https://docs.branch.io

Contributing

• Folders

  • Must be lowercase and hyphened

• Content

  • Bullets and sections must have double new line spacing in between

  • Indention is 4 spaces

  • Search works best when content is not duplicated

  • Only add periods if more than one sentence

• Style

  • Titles # Title

  • Sections ## Section

  • Category - #### Section

  • Content - content

• Code Tabs

  • Tabbed sections *title*, code, *title*, code

• Navigation

  • Different page click [here](/apps/ios/) (must have trailing slash)

  • Different page anchor click [here](/apps/ios/#configure-bundle-identifier)

  • Same page anchor click [here](#configure-bundle-identifier)

• Tips, notes, warnings etc.

  • Syntax for tips and other highlighted blocks can be found here: http://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/extensions/admonition/

• Code Modals

  • Complete [Integrate your app](#dialog-code?ios=create-deep-link&android=install-branch)

  • Complete [Integrate your app](#dialog-code)

  • ios, android, cordova, mparticleAndroid, mparticleIos, titanium, reactNative, unity, xamarin

• Images

  • Content pages are kept in the _assets/img/pages

  • Example images used in ingredients are kept in the _assets/img/ingredients

  • ![image](http://i.imgur.com/dyfhN0L.png)

• Search

  • Hosted by Algolia Docsearch

  • Localhost scrapes production

  • Production is scraped once a day

  • Prevent search results by adding production url to stop_urls (config)

• Redirection

All redirections are controlled in the redirects.txt file. Because of the way S3 handles redirects, these should always end with index.html to catch all URL variants.

For example: app-indexing/index.html https://branch.io/mobile-search/app-indexing/ will redriect as follows:

Location	➜	Destination
[s3_bucket_root]/app-indexing [s3_bucket_root]/app-indexing/ [s3_bucket_root]/app-indexing/index.html	➜	https://branch.io/mobile-search/app-indexing/

Additional

• Resources

  • framework http://www.mkdocs.org/

  • design https://github.com/squidfunk/mkdocs-material

  • extensions https://github.com/facelessuser/pymdown-extensions

  • docsearch config https://github.com/algolia/docsearch-configs/blob/master/configs/branchmetrics.json

• Mkdocs Locally

  • readme http://www.mkdocs.org/about/contributing/

  • update to repo git subtree add --prefix lib/mkdocs https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs master --squash

  • add locally pip install --editable lib/mkdocs

• Mkdocs Fix

  • remove mkdocs sudo rm -rf /usr/local/bin/mkdocs

  • remove mkdocs link rm -rf /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/mkdocs.egg-link

  • remove pip rm -rf /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages

  • reinstall pip curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py > a.py && chmod -x a.py && sudo ./a.py

  • reinstall dependencies

  • run develop

• Mkdocs-Material Locally

  • readme http://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/customization/#theme-development

  • add to repo git subtree add --prefix lib/mkdocs-material https://github.com/squidfunk/mkdocs-material master --squash

  • update to repo git subtree pull --prefix lib/mkdocs-material https://github.com/squidfunk/mkdocs-material master --squash

  • test live update in /materials

  • prod code in /src

    • cd lib/mkdocs-material

    • yarn install

    • yarn build (will build /material, but fail on /site (this is okay))

  • updated files

    • lib/mkdocs-material/src/partials/footer.html

    • lib/mkdocs-material/src/partials/header.html

    • lib/mkdocs-material/src/partials/search.html

    • lib/mkdocs-material/src/partials/nav.html

    • lib/mkdocs-material/src/base.html

    • lib/mkdocs-material/src/assets/javascripts/application.js

    • lib/mkdocs-material/src/assets/images/favicon.png

• Slow page render

  • The docs should load within 1400ms. If it takes 5000ms, please disable Ghostery (Google Analytics) and Adblocker (the docs have AB testing)

• Missing search

  • Some ad blockers prevent the search from appearing