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Contributing to Developer Portal

The Developer Portal uses Markdown and MkDocs, which are used in almost all documentation projects across Siemens.

For the First Time Contributors: If you're looking for a comprehensive guide on how to use markdown, you can find a helpful overview of its available elements. Keep in mind that "Insiders" features are not supported.

Please refer to faq.md for FAQs

Developer Documentation

The docs in Developer Portal folder is the home for the product documentation. Every product has a subfolder with respective product documentation.

Note: If you are adding product documentation for the first time, please create a new folder under the docs folder and name it in lower case after your product with the prefix ext. Please don't use blanks in folder names, use dashes - instead.

There is an example how to structure your documentation in the docs/ext-anybotics folder.

Following list specifies the files and changes that are needed to contribute to developer portal :

  • Developer documentation in Markdown format
  • Navigation file
  • An API card per API Service
  • Maintainers file
  • Add product line information to mkdocs-public.yml. For example, - Name Of The Product: product-folder/
  • Add API card to apis.external.yml in each product folder. See example in docs/ext-anybotics
  • Add an empty _public_signed_off file to the root folder of your documentation folder to confirm that you sign off your files for public deployment on Github

Structure for Developer Documentation

API Product

  • A single API product can have multiple APIs.
  • If there is only one API in the product you can skip the API/Service Overview page. See example in docs/ext-anybotics.
  • Please describe authentication and authorization concepts in getting started guide!

We recommend the following structure to provide documentation:

  • Product Overview Page (mandatory)
  • API/Service:
    • Overview (the landing page for the API)
    • Custom Sections: Any additional documentation relevant to the service
    • OpenAPI Specification (if applicable)
    • Async API Specification (if applicable)
    • Postman collection for OpenAPI specs (optional)
    • Changelog (optional)
    • Examples (optional)
    • Getting Started guide
    • Links to Sandbox Environment (optional)
    • Links to own Developer portals (optional)
  • Contact information (mandatory)

You can find an example in the repository here ./docs/ext-anybotics/ or take a look at the rendered version when running the portal.

Images

  • Please provide images which look good on all devices.
  • Images should be optimized and the right format should be chosen.
  • Images shouldn't exceed the file size of 500 kB.
  • Preferred formats for static images are .svg, .jpg, .png.
  • The preferred format for animated images is .webp instead of .gif.

What to do if you already have a developer portal or an existing repository with the documentation

If you already have a developer portal for your product, and you don't want to migrate to this repository, you can create an overview page and a contact page, and create relevant links to your developer portal.

Navigation configuration file nav.md is required under each docs/<name of your product line> folder.

Further details on navigation configuration can be found at mkdocs-literate-nav plugin.

API cards

The following information is required per product in order to create the API cards in the API catalogue

  • Product Name
  • API name
  • A short description in plain text
  • Tags (maximum of 3 tags)
  • Link to technical documentation

Note: Tags can be selected from a predefined list of allowed tags. If a new tag needs to be added, please contact maintainers of the project.

The View technical documentation section on the API card will redirect you to detailed documentation.

The above API card information must be added to apis.external.yml in each product folder. See Anybotics example

Maintainers File

For every first-level directory within docs/, a maintainers file must be included.

File Name

This file should be called maintainers.yml and located in the root directory within your project documentation, alongside apis.external.yml file.

File Structure

  • product: The name of the API or product.
  • site: The site (internal or external, for the Internal or External Developer Portal).
  • operating_company: The company operating the product.
  • saas_offering: Indicates if the product is offered as SaaS (true or false).
  • owner:
    • department: The department owning the product.
    • person: The email address or full name of the primary owner.
  • maintainer: A list of the maintainers' email addresses or full names.
  • contribution:
    • workflow: The contribution workflow. Please specify push as the value.
  • comment: Additional comments about the product or its maintenance.

Example

- product: Carbon Footprint Indicator
  site: external
  operating_company: DI
  saas_offering: true
  owner:
      department: DI SW PLM DM
      person: example@siemens.com
  maintainer:
      - example@siemens.com
  contribution:
      workflow: monorepo
  comment:
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