You can configure how GitBook should parse your Git repository using the.gitbook.yaml
file that must rely on the root of your repository.
Here is an example:
root: ./structure:readme: README.mdsummary: SUMMARY.mdredirects:previous/page: new-folder/page.md
Path to lookup for your documentation defaults to the root directory of the repository. Here's how you can tell GitBook to look into a "docs" folder:
root: ./docs/
All other options that specify paths will be relative to this root folder. So if you define root as ./docs/
and then structure.summary
as ./product/SUMMARY.md
, GitBook will actually look for a file in ./docs/product/SUMMARY.md
.
The structure accepts two properties:
readme: Your documentation's first page. Its default value is ./README.md
summary: Your documentation's table of content. Its default value is ./SUMMARY.md
The value of those properties is a path to the corresponding files. The path is relative to the "root" option. For example, here's how you can tell GitBook to look into a ./product
folder for the first page and summary:
structure:readme: ./product/README.mdsummary: ./product/SUMMARY.md
The summary
file is a Markdown file (.md
) that should have the following structure:
# Summary## Use headings to create page groups like this one* [First page's title](page1/README.md)* [Some child page](page1/page1-1.md)* [Some other child page](part1/page1-2.md)* [Second page's title](page2/README.md)* [Some child page](page2/page2-1.md)* [Some other child page](part2/page2-2.md)## A second-page group* [Yet another page](another-page.md)
Providing a custom summary file is optional. By default, GitBook will look for a file named SUMMARY.md
in your root
folder if specified in your config file, or at the root of the repository otherwise.
If you don't specify a summary, and GitBook does not find a SUMMARY.md
file at the root of your docs, GitBook will infer the table of contents from the folder structure and the Markdown files below.
The summary markdown file is a mirror of the Table of Contents of your GitBook space. So even when no summary file is provided during an initial import, GitBook will create one and/or update it whenever you update your content using the GitBook editor.
Due to this, it is not possible to reference the same markdown file twice in your SUMMARY.md
file, because this would imply that a single page lives at two different URLs in your GitBook space.
You can create custom redirects of a URL to a page by specifying the path to the corresponding file. The path is relative to the "root" option. For example, here's how you can tell GitBook to redirect users accessing /help
to the support page:
redirects:help: ./support.md
🧙♂ Tips: The URL must not include the leading slash.
Here's how you can deal with a more complex URL:
redirects:help/contact: ./contact.md
🧠Note: With Git, when a file is moved many times, the file is removed and a new one is created. This makes it impossible for GitBook to know that a folder has been renamed for example. Make sure to double-check and eventually add a redirect.