django-docs-viewer

A simple in-app Markdown documentation viewer for Django.

Point it at a directory of Markdown files and it serves them as browsable documentation pages with an auto-generated sidebar. No build step, no database, no models — pages are read from disk and rendered on request.

Features

• Renders Markdown files (fenced_code, tables, toc, sane_lists).
• Auto-generated sidebar navigation grouped by folder — or hand-written via a menu.md file.
• Automatic per-page table of contents built from each page's headings.
• Case-insensitive, traversal-safe URL resolution.
• Serves images referenced from your Markdown.
• Login required by default; can be made public with one setting.
• Self-contained, overridable templates.

How it compares

The niche is zero-build, database-free, self-navigating docs: Markdown rendered at request time, with the sidebar and per-page table of contents built from the folder tree and headings. django-markdown-view also renders at request time but builds no navigation; Django Spellbook builds navigation but via a generation step and as part of a larger Markdown-components framework.

Installation

pip install django-docs-viewer

Usage

Add the app to INSTALLED_APPS and point DOCS_VIEWER_ROOT at your docs directory:

# settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
    "docs_viewer",
]

DOCS_VIEWER_ROOT = BASE_DIR / "docs"

Include the URLs:

# urls.py
from django.urls import include, path

urlpatterns = [
    # ...
    path("docs/", include("docs_viewer.urls")),
]

By default the docs require an authenticated user and redirect anonymous visitors to LOGIN_URL, so make sure your project has a login view — or set DOCS_VIEWER_LOGIN_REQUIRED = False to make the docs public.

Your docs directory can be flat:

docs/
├── README.md                     # landing page + site title
├── 01-getting-started.md
└── 02-configuration.md

or nested, with folders becoming sidebar groups:

docs/
├── README.md                     # landing page + site title
└── manual/
    ├── 01-getting-started.md
    ├── 02-configuration.md
    └── images/
        └── status-legend.png

Folders nest to any depth, and each level becomes a sidebar group, so a subfolder per language keeps translated pages neatly separated instead of listing every language in one flat group:

docs/
├── README.md                     # landing page + site title
└── manual/
    ├── deutsch/
    │   ├── 01-erste-schritte.md
    │   └── 02-konfiguration.md
    ├── english/
    │   ├── 01-getting-started.md
    │   └── 02-configuration.md
    └── francais/
        ├── 01-prise-en-main.md
        └── 02-configuration.md

Group labels come from the folder name, humanized (dashes and underscores become spaces, and it is title-cased), so name folders in lowercase — deutsch renders as Deutsch in the sidebar.

Pages sort by filename within their folder (the index/README first). Prefix filenames with a zero-padded number (01-, 02-) to control the order; the prefix is stripped from the sidebar label, so 01-getting-started.md shows as Getting started. Zero-pad once you pass nine pages, otherwise 10-… sorts ahead of 2-….

Settings

The page title is taken from the first level-1 heading of the index (index.md or README.md) at the docs root, falling back to DOCS_VIEWER_TITLE.

Customizing the template

The docs page (docs_viewer/detail.html) extends whatever template DOCS_VIEWER_BASE_TEMPLATE names, resolved dynamically at render time. By default it extends the minimal docs_viewer/base.html bundled with the app, so it works with no configuration.

To make docs pages inherit your site's chrome, point the setting at your own base template:

DOCS_VIEWER_BASE_TEMPLATE = "myproject/base.html"

Your base template only needs a content block (and, optionally, a title block):

{% block title %}{% endblock %}
...
{% block content %}{% endblock %}

To change the docs page itself rather than the surrounding layout, override docs_viewer/detail.html in your own template directory.

Custom navigation

By default the sidebar is generated from your folder tree. To control it by hand instead, add a menu.md file at the root of your docs directory. When present, its rendered Markdown replaces the auto-generated sidebar (and menu.md itself is never served as a page).

Write it as a normal Markdown list of links:

- [Introduction](/docs/)
- [Getting started](/docs/manual/01-getting-started)
- [Configuration](/docs/manual/02-configuration)

The links are rendered as-is, so point them at the paths where you mounted the viewer — the /docs/ prefix above matches path("docs/", include(...)).

Translations

The interface strings ship translated into English, German and French. The active language follows Django's usual i18n machinery, so enable django.middleware.locale.LocaleMiddleware (and keep USE_I18N = True) if you want the docs to follow the request's language.

Development

poetry install
poetry run python manage.py test tests

Run the full support matrix with tox:

poetry run tox

See CONTRIBUTING.md for coverage, translations, and the pull-request checklist.

License

MIT