MongoDB Manual Organization¶

This document provides an overview of the global organization of the documentation resource. Refer to the notes below if you are having trouble understanding the reasoning behind a file’s current location, or if you want to add new documentation but aren’t sure how to integrate it into the existing resource.

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to open a ticket in the Documentation Jira Project or contact the documentation team.

Global Organization¶

Indexes and Experience¶

The documentation project has two “index files”: /contents.txt and /index.txt. The “contents” file provides the documentation’s tree structure, which Sphinx uses to create the left-pane navigational structure, to power the “Next” and “Previous” page functionality, and to provide all overarching outlines of the resource. The “index” file is not included in the “contents” file (and thus builds will produce a warning here) and is the page that users first land on when visiting the resource.

Having separate “contents” and “index” files provides a bit more flexibility with the organization of the resource while also making it possible to customize the primary user experience.

Additionally, in the top level of the source/ directory, there are a number of “topical” index or outline files. These (like the “index” and “contents” files) use the .. toctree:: directive to provide organization within the documentation. The topical indexes combine to create the index in the contents file.

Topical Indexes and Meta Organization¶

Because the documentation on any given subject exists in a number of different locations across the resource the “topical” indexes provide the real structure and organization to the resource. This organization makes it possible to provide great flexibility while still maintaining a reasonable organization of files and URLs for the documentation. Consider the following example:

Given that topic such as “replication,” has material regarding the administration of replica sets, as well as reference material, an overview of the functionality, and operational tutorials, it makes more sense to include a few locations for documents, and use the meta documents to provide the topic-level organization.

Current topical indexes include:

getting-started
administration
applications
reference
mongo
sharding
replication
faq

Additional topical indexes are forthcoming.

The Top Level Folders¶

The documentation has a number of top-level folders, that hold all of the content of the resource. Consider the following list and explanations below:

“administration” - contains all of the operational and architectural information that systems and database administrators need to know in order to run MongoDB. Topics include: monitoring, replica sets, shard clusters, deployment architectures, and configuration.
“applications” - contains information about application development and use. While most documentation regarding application development is within the purview of the driver documentation, there are some larger topics regarding the use of these features that deserve some coverage in this context. Topics include: drivers, schema design, optimization, replication, and sharding.
“core” - contains overviews and introduction to the core features, functionality, and concepts of MongoDB. Topics include: replication, sharding, capped collections, journaling/durability, aggregation.
“reference” - contains references and indexes of shell functions, database commands, status outputs, as well as manual pages for all of the programs come with MongoDB (e.g. mongostat and mongodump.)
“tutorial” - contains operational guides and tutorials that lead users through common tasks (administrative and conceptual) with MongoDB. This includes programming patterns and operational guides.
“faq” - contains all the frequently asked questions related to MongoDB, in a collection of topical files.