# Custom themes

A guide to creating and distributing custom themes.

Note

If you are looking for third party themes, they are listed in the MkDocs community wiki. If you want to share a theme you create, you should list it on the Wiki.

When creating a new theme, you can either follow the steps in this guide to create one from scratch or you can download the `mkdocs-basic-theme` as a basic, yet complete, theme with all the boilerplate required. You can find this base theme on GitHub. It contains detailed comments in the code to describe the different features and their usage.

## Creating a custom theme

The bare minimum required for a custom theme is a `main.html` Jinja2 template file. This should be placed in a directory which will be the `theme_dir` and it should be created next to the `mkdocs.yml` configuration file. Within `mkdocs.yml`, specify the `theme_dir` option and set it to the name of the directory containing `main.html`. For example, given this example project layout:

    mkdocs.yml
    docs/
        index.md
        about.md
    custom_theme/
        main.html
        ...

You would include the following settings in `mkdocs.yml` to use the custom theme directory:

    theme: null
    theme_dir: 'custom_theme'

Note

Generally, when building your own custom theme, the `theme` configuration setting would be set to `null`. However, if used in combination with the `theme_dir` configuration value a custom theme can be used to replace only specific parts of a built-in theme. For example, with the above layout and if you set `theme: "mkdocs"` then the `main.html` file in the `theme_dir` would replace that in the theme but otherwise the `mkdocs` theme would remain the same. This is useful if you want to make small adjustments to an existing theme.

For more specific information, see styling your docs.

## Basic theme

The simplest `main.html` file is the following:

    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html>
      <head>
        <title>{% if page_title %}{{ page_title }} - {% endif %}{{ site_name }}</title>
      </head>
      <body>
        {{ content }}
      </body>
    </html>

Article content from each page specified in `mkdocs.yml` is inserted using the `{{ content }}` tag. Style-sheets and scripts can be brought into this theme as with a normal HTML file. Navbars and tables of contents can also be generated and included automatically, through the `nav` and `toc` objects, respectively. If you wish to write your own theme, it is recommended to start with one of the built-in themes and modify it accordingly.

Note

As MkDocs uses Jinja as its template engine, you have access to all the power of Jinja, including template inheritance. You may notice that the themes included with MkDocs make extensive use of template inheritance and blocks, allowing users to easily override small bits and pieces of the templates from the theme_dir. Therefore, the built-in themes are implemented in a `base.html` file, which `main.html` extends. Although not required, third party template authors are encouraged to follow a similar pattern and may want to define the same blocks as are used in the built-in themes for consistency.

## Template Variables

Each template in a theme is built with a template context. These are the variables that are available to themes. The context varies depending on the template that is being built. At the moment templates are either built with the global context or with a page specific context. The global context is used for HTML pages that don't represent an individual Markdown document, for example a 404.html page or search.html.

### Global Context

The following variables are available globally on any template.

#### config

The `config` variable is an instance of MkDocs' config object generated from the `mkdocs.yml` config file. While you can use any config option, some commonly used options include:

- config.site_name
- config.site_url
- config.site_author
- config.site_description
- config.repo_url
- config.repo_name
- config.copyright
- config.google_analytics

#### nav

The `nav` variable is used to create the navigation for the documentation. Following is a basic usage example which outputs the first and second level navigation as a nested list.

    {% if nav|length>1 %}
        <ul>
        {% for nav_item in nav %}
            {% if nav_item.children %}
                <li>{{ nav_item.title }}
                    <ul>
                    {% for nav_item in nav_item.children %}
                        <li class="{% if nav_item.active%}current{%endif%}">
                            <a href="{{ nav_item.url }}">{{ nav_item.title }}</a>
                        </li>
                    {% endfor %}
                    </ul>
                </li>
            {% else %}
                <li class="{% if nav_item.active%}current{%endif%}">
                    <a href="{{ nav_item.url }}">{{ nav_item.title }}</a>
                </li>
            {% endif %}
        {% endfor %}
        </ul>
    {% endif %}

The `nav` object also contains a `hompage` object, which points to the `page` object of the homepage. For example, you may want to access `nav.homepage.url`.

#### base_url

The `base_url` provides a relative path to the root of the MkDocs project. This makes it easy to include links to static assets in your theme. For example, if your theme includes a `js` folder, to include `theme.js` from that folder on all pages you would do this:

    <script src="{{ base_url }}/js/theme.js"></script>

#### extra_css

Contains a list of URLs to the style-sheets listed in the extra_css config setting. Unlike the config setting, which contains local paths, this variable contains absolute paths from the homepage.

#### extra_javascript

Contains a list of URLs to the scripts listed in the extra_javascript config setting. Unlike the config setting, which contains local paths, this variable contains absolute paths from the homepage.

#### mkdocs_version

Contains the current MkDocs version.

#### build_date_utc

A Python datetime object that represents the date and time the documentation was built in UTC. This is useful for showing how recently the documentation was updated.

#### page

In templates which are not rendered from a Markdown source file, the `page` variable is `None`. In templates which are rendered from a Markdown source file, the `page` variable contains a page object with the following attributes:

##### page.title

Contains the Title for the current page.

##### page.content

The rendered Markdown as HTML, this is the contents of the documentation.

##### page.toc

An object representing the Table of contents for a page. Displaying the table of contents as a simple list can be achieved like this.

    <ul>
    {% for toc_item in page.toc %}
        <li><a href="{{ toc_item.url }}">{{ toc_item.title }}</a></li>
        {% for toc_item in toc_item.children %}
            <li><a href="{{ toc_item.url }}">{{ toc_item.title }}</a></li>
        {% endfor %}
    {% endfor %}
    </ul>

##### page.meta

A mapping of the metadata included at the top of the markdown page. In this example we define a `source` property above the page title.

    source: generics.py
            mixins.py

    # Page title

    Content...

A template can access this metadata for the page with the `meta.source` variable. This could then be used to link to source files related to the documentation page.

    {% for filename in page.meta.source %}
      <a class="github" href="https://github.com/.../{{ filename }}">
        <span class="label label-info">{{ filename }}</span>
      </a>
    {% endfor %}

##### page.canonical_url

The full, canonical URL to the current page. This includes the `site_url` from the configuration.

##### page.edit_url

The full URL to the input page in the source repository. Typically used to provide a link to edit the source page.

##### page.url

The URL to the current page not including the `site_url` from the configuration.

##### page.is_homepage

Evaluates to `True` for the homepage of the site and `False` for all other pages. This can be used in conjunction with other attributes of the `page` object to alter the behavior. For example, to display a different title on the homepage:

    {% if not page.is_homepage %}{{ page.title }} - {% endif %}{{ site_name }}

##### page.previous_page

The page object for the previous page. The usage is the same as for `page`.

##### page.next_page

The page object for the next page.The usage is the same as for `page`.

### Extra Context

Additional variables can be passed to the template with the `extra` configuration option. This is a set of key value pairs that can make custom templates far more flexible.

For example, this could be used to include the project version of all pages and a list of links related to the project. This can be achieved with the following `extra` configuration:

    extra:
        version: 0.13.0
        links:
            - https://github.com/mkdocs
            - https://docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/builds.html#mkdocs
            - http://www.mkdocs.org/

And then displayed with this HTML in the custom theme.

    {{ config.extra.version }}

    {% if config.extra.links %}
      <ul>
      {% for link in config.extra.links %}
          <li>{{ link }}</li>
      {% endfor %}
      </ul>
    {% endif %}

## Search and themes

As of MkDocs `0.13` client side search support has been added to MkDocs with Lunr.js.

Search can either be added to every page in the theme or to a dedicated template which must be named `search.html`. The search template will be built with the same name and can be viewable with `mkdocs serve` at `http://localhost:8000/search.html`. An example of the two different approaches can be seen by comparing the `mkdocs` and `readthedocs` themes.

The following HTML needs to be added to the theme so the JavaScript is loaded for Lunr.js.

    <script>var base_url = '{{ base_url }}';</script>
    <script data-main="{{ base_url }}/mkdocs/js/search.js" src="{{ base_url }}/mkdocs/js/require.js"></script>

Note

The above JavaScript will download the search index, for larger documentation projects this can be a heavy operation. In those cases, it is suggested that you either use the `search.html` approach to only include search on one page or load the JavaScript on an event like a form submit.

This loads the JavaScript and sets a global variable `base_url` which allows the JavaScript to make the links relative to the current page. The above JavaScript, with the following HTML in a `search.html` template will add a full search implementation to your theme.

    <h1 id="search">Search Results</h1>

    <form action="search.html">
      <input name="q" id="mkdocs-search-query" type="text" >
    </form>

    <div id="mkdocs-search-results">
      Sorry, page not found.
    </div>

This works by looking for the specific ID's used in the above HTML. The input for the user to type the search query must have the ID `mkdocs-search-query` and `mkdocs-search-results` is the directory where the results will be placed.

## Packaging Themes

MkDocs makes use of Python packaging to distribute themes. This comes with a few requirements.

To see an example of a package containing one theme, see the MkDocs Bootstrap theme and to see a package that contains many themes, see the MkDocs Bootswatch theme.

Note

It is not strictly necessary to package a theme, as the entire theme can be contained in the `theme_dir`. If you have created a "one-off theme," that should be sufficent. However, if you intend to distribute your theme for others to use, packaging the theme has some advantages. By packaging your theme, your users can more easily install it and they can them take advantage of the theme_dir to make tweaks to your theme to better suit their needs.

### Package Layout

The following layout is recommended for themes. Two files at the top level directory called `MANIFEST.in` amd `setup.py` beside the theme directory which contains an empty `__init__.py` file and your template and media files.

    .
    |-- MANIFEST.in
    |-- theme_name
    |   |-- __init__.py
    |   |-- main.html
    |   |-- styles.css
    `-- setup.py

The `MANIFEST.in` file should contain the following contents but with theme_name updated and any extra file extensions added to the include.

    recursive-include theme_name *.ico *.js *.css *.png *.html *.eot *.svg *.ttf *.woff
    recursive-exclude * __pycache__
    recursive-exclude * *.py[co]

The `setup.py` should include the following text with the modifications described below.

    from setuptools import setup, find_packages

    VERSION = '0.0.1'

    setup(
        name="mkdocs-themename",
        version=VERSION,
        url='',
        license='',
        description='',
        author='',
        author_email='',
        packages=find_packages(),
        include_package_data=True,
        entry_points={
            'mkdocs.themes': [
                'themename = theme_name',
            ]
        },
        zip_safe=False
    )

Fill in the URL, license, description, author and author email address.

The name should follow the convention `mkdocs-themename` (like `mkdocs- bootstrap` and `mkdocs-bootswatch`), starting with MkDocs, using hyphens to separate words and including the name of your theme.

Most of the rest of the file can be left unedited. The last section we need to change is the entry_points. This is how MkDocs finds the theme(s) you are including in the package. The name on the left is the one that users will use in their mkdocs.yml and the one on the right is the directory containing your theme files.

The directory you created at the start of this section with the main.html file should contain all of the other theme files. The minimum requirement is that it includes a `main.html` for the theme. It must also include a `__init__.py` file which should be empty, this file tells Python that the directory is a package.

### Distributing Themes

With the above changes, your theme should now be ready to install. This can be done with pip, using `pip install .` if you are still in the same directory as the setup.py.

Most Python packages, including MkDocs, are distributed on PyPI. To do this, you should run the following command.

    python setup.py register

If you don't have an account setup, you should be prompted to create one.

For a much more detailed guide, see the official Python packaging documentation for Packaging and Distributing Projects.

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