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Introduction

Welcome to the Prodcat Developer Guide. This guide is for developers who want to customize, extend, and contribute to Prodcat.

Overview​

Prodcat for developers​

Prodcat is built with developers in mind. It's a Node.js-based command-line tool that leverages Docusaurus and Handlebars to generate stunning software product documentation websites. This guide will help you understand the project's architecture, how to set up your development environment, and how to get started with customizing and extending Prodcat.

System architecture overview​

Prodcat's architecture is straightforward. It takes a products.js file as input, which contains an array of software product objects. It then uses Handlebars templates to generate Markdown files for each software product. These Markdown files are then placed in the Docusaurus docs directory, and Docusaurus takes care of building the final HTML website.

Technology stack​

Prodcat is built on the following technologies:

  • Node.js: The runtime environment for the Prodcat CLI.
  • Docusaurus: The static site generator used to build the documentation website.
  • Handlebars: The templating engine used to generate Markdown files.
  • Commander.js: The framework for building the command-line interface.
  • Joi: The schema validation library used for validating the configuration.

Getting Started​

Setting up the development environment​

To set up your development environment, you'll need to clone the Prodcat repository from GitHub and install the dependencies.

git clone https://github.com/ioncakephper/prodcat.git
cd prodcat
npm install

Running the project locally​

To run the Prodcat CLI locally, you can use the npm link command to create a symbolic link to the prodcat command.

npm link

Now you can run the prodcat command in your terminal.

Project structure and key files​

Here are some of the key files and directories in the Prodcat project:

  • bin/cli.js: The entry point for the Prodcat CLI.
  • src/index.js: The main application logic.
  • src/commands: The directory containing the CLI commands.
  • src/utils: The directory containing utility functions.
  • templates: The directory containing the Handlebars templates.
  • prodcat.config.js: The main configuration file.
  • products.js: The file containing the software product data.