mkdocs-categories-plugin 0.6.0

An MkDocs plugin allowing for categorization of pages

mkdocs-categories-plugin

An MkDocs plugin allowing for categorization of pages in your wiki. This plugin allows for multiple categories per page and will generate a category index page with links to each page within the category.

If you like this MkDocs plugin, you'll probably also like mkdocs-alias-plugin and mkdocs-live-edit-plugin.

Installation

Using Python 3.10 or greater, install the package using pip:

pip install mkdocs-categories-plugin

Then add the following entry to the plugins section of your mkdocs.yml file:

plugins:
  - categories

Important: If you already have a directory named categories in your project's root directory or a section named categories, you must change the base_name option to something else in order to prevent issues or data loss.

For further configuration, see the Options section below.

Usage

Add a categories section to your page's meta block:

---
categories:
    - Novels
    - Fiction
    - 19th Century Gothic Fiction
---

New pages will be generated for each of these categories, with a list of links to each of the wiki pages within the category. Subcategories, links to the parent category, and a link to the "All Categories" page are automatically generated and placed on the page.

Category names are slugified before used in category URLs. For example, 19th Century Gothic Fiction becomes 19th-century-gothic-fiction.

Please refer to the MkDocs documentation for more information on how the meta-data block is used.

Subcategories

As of version 0.3.0, mkdocs-categories-plugin supports subcategorization. This is achieved by supplying a category name that separates parent from child categories using a separator (by default |, configurable via category_separator). You may supply as many levels of child categories as you like.

For example:

categories:
    - Fiction|Romance
    - Fiction|Books|British Authors|Female|19th Century

The first category definition in this example places the page in the Romance subcategory of the Fiction parent category. Note that the page will not be placed in the parent category of Fiction, but only in the Romance category. The second category definition places the page in the 19th Century category, but not in any of its ancestor categories.

Options

You may customize the plugin by passing options into the plugin's configuration sections in mkdocs.yml:

plugins:
    - categories:
        generate_index: true
        verbose: false
        base_name: 'categories'
        section_title: 'Categories'
        no_nav: false
        category_separator: '|'

generate_index

Default: true

If true, an index page listing all of the generated categories is created at the base_name URL.

verbose

Default: false

You may use the optional verbose option to print more information about which categories were defined during build and how many in total.

base_name

Default: categories

A string that's used to both serve as the URL base for the category pages as well as the navigation section that's automatically generated. Since this string is used in the generated category URL, please ensure that it only contains URL-friendly characters.

section_title

Default: Categories

This is the string that's used to render the H2 header at the bottom of each page that defines categories. It is followed by a list of links to each category.

no_nav

Default: false

By default, mkdocs-categories-plugin will generate navigation entries for each category page under the base_name that you provided. If you want to turn this behavior off, set this option to true.

There's also a know issue with mkdocs-awesome-pages-plugin compatibility that does not allow you to reorder the position of the generated categories section by using a .pages file. If you would rather turn the navigation entries off entirely, this option is for you.

category_separator

Default: |

This string is used to split the category name in order to define a category hierarchy (see subcategories above).

show_breadcrumbs

Default: False

When set to true, breadcrumb links to each category in the category's lineage are displayed. The breadcrumb separator string may be customized by setting the breadcrumb_separator option to the desired string (the default is ">").

Troubleshooting

There's a directory named categories in my project

A fatal error must have occurred during the compilation of your site and left the temporary directory containing the intermediate markdown files used by this plugin behind. It is safe to delete this directory since it's only used during the build.

The categories object at URL was not a list, but TYPE

The page identified did not contain a valid categories configuration object. Please make sure that this is an array of strings.

Local Development

Upgrade pip and install the dependencies:

python -m pip install --upgrade pip
pip install pylint mkdocs natsort setuptools

Installing a local copy of the plugin (potentially from your MkDoc's venv location):

pip install -e /path/to/mkdocs-alias-plugin/

Run the linter:

pylint $(git ls-files '*.py')

Changelog

0.6.0

• Adds support for breadcrumbs using the newly added show_breadcrumbs option.
• Enhanced the display of hierarchical categories on the "All Categories" page.

0.5.0

Fixes many build info warnings about absolute paths due to MkDocs' improved validation. Made the links that are generated more correct.

0.4.0

Fixes sorting categories, child pages, etc. containing numbers by using natural sorting from the natsort package rather than the default sorting function.

0.3.0

Added support for subcategories. Python 3.10 or higher is now required.

0.2.1

Patch release: implements a bug fix by @rpmzandwijk reported in #1.

0.2.0

Introduces support for the automatic generation of category index pages. This new default behavior can be turned off using an option.

0.1.1

Fixed a breaking bug caused by passing the wrong data into sorted.

0.1.0

Initial release with all of the base logic in place.