The PHP documentation is built from XML files and render into PHP files that are available on the php.net/manual pages. All parts of the process live in the following GitHub repositories:
- doc-* repos: these are the repositories where all the information on documentation pages live and this is where changes to the wording and/or structure of the documentation's content can be made
- doc-base: validates and pre-processes the language files
- PhD: renders pages into .php files which include information on the files and function calls to include the documentation page headers and footers
- web-php: serves up the .php files generated by PhD and includes the functions to generate page headers and footers (to include contribution call-out and user notes)
These repositories contain PHP's documentation in their respective languages and these are where changes to the content/structure of the php.net's documentation pages are made.
Please refer to doc-base's contribution guidlines on how to contribute to the documentation.
doc-base validates and combines the documentations' XML files.
It includes a skeleton/main table of contents of the PHP documentation (index.php)
and the configure.php script which processes the documentation:
- pulls version info file from repo files
- starting from the skeleton/main table of contents file, it iterates over all files in the language repository and includes all elements with the appropriate IDs
- pulls modification history file
- generates the file entities from the source language directory and writes these back into the same directory
- loads the combined XML file into memory
- runs/executes all XInclude/XPointer links
- subtitutes entities
- validates the document based on its DTD
Please refer to doc-base's contribution guidlines on further details on how to use doc-base.
PhD (PHP DocBook) renders the combined XML file, the version file and modification history files generated/copied by doc-base into the final PHP documentation pages.
While PhD is capable of generating the documentation in a number of formats, the PHP documentation website is using the format that generates .php files. This format adds PHP code in each file that contains information on the current page (e.g. title, breadcrumbs, source file name/path, last modified date/time, contributor list) and calls to setting up the header and footer for the page.
It's important to note that the function calls included in the pages here are for functions that are defined in web-php. A new functionality added to web-php can only be used if the appropriate format in PhD is modified to include the function call.
Other than the above PhD also does the following:
- writes the search-index and search-description json files
- copies (by default downloads) css files into the output directory
- copies images to the images directory
- generates and saves the TOC (table of contents) files (the TOC/navbar on the right side of the documentation pages)
Please refer to doc-base's contribution guidlines on further details on how to use PhD.
web-php is the repository that PHP's web servers actually run (ie. almost everything accesible on php.net).
This repository includes the functions that generate the header (top navigation and search bar) and footer (copyright, privacy policy, etc.) for most php.net pages and it also includes the functions that generate the additional header (breadcrumbs, language dropdown, etc.) and footer (contribution and user notes sections) of documentation pages.
It uses the css, image, TOC and search index/description files copied/generated by PhD to serve up images/css files, generate the right side TOC/navbar on the documentation pages and make the search bar on php.net work.
Please refer to doc-base's contribution guidlines on further details on how to use web-php.