Restate documentation

This repository contains Restate's documentation: https://docs.restate.dev/

Developing the documentation

The documentation is built using Docusaurus 2.

Installation

$ yarn

Local Development

$ yarn start

This command starts a local development server and opens up a browser window. Most changes are reflected live without having to restart the server.

Build

$ yarn build

This command generates static content into the build directory and can be served using any static contents hosting service.

Staging area

The main branch of the documentation is continuously deployed at https://main.documentation-beg.pages.dev.

Adding code snippets

If you want to add code snippets to the docs, they should be testable and compileable on PR merges and releases.

Adding the code snippet

Add you code snippet in the folder code_snippets in the subprojects for the respective language: TypeScript or Java. Keep the package structure identical to path of where the code snippet is referenced in the documentation.

Using tags in the code snippet for start and end

If you only want to use a section of the code snippet in the docs. Specify the start by specifying a comment <start_here> and the end by specifying a comment <end_here> inside the code snippet. For example:

greet: async (ctx: restate.Context, name: string) => {
    // <start_here>
    // option 1: use full API spec
    ctx.send(myGreeterApi).greet("Pete");
    // <end_here>
},

You can also use custom tags. Tags need to follow the format // <start_custom_tag> and // <end_custom_tag>.

Refer to the code snippet from within the markdown documentation file as follows CODE_LOAD::<path_to_snippet>. If you use custom tags, specify them as CODE_LOAD::<path_to_snippet>#custom_tag. You need to put this inside a code block with the language specified. The path is relative from within the code_snippets folder. For example, CODE_LOAD::java/src/main/java/Greeter.java#greet_function will look for the tags // <start_greet_function> and // <end_greet_function> in the code.

Marking code

If you want to mark a specific line in the code snippet, you can use the following tags : // <mark_1> and // </mark_1>. You can use other numbers as well

You can specify in markdown which marking number should be applied: CODE_LOAD::<path_to_snippet>?mark_number, for example:

CODE_LOAD::ts/src/use_cases/signup_workflow.ts?5

This will look for the following tags: // <mark_5> and // </mark_5> and only mark those. Other custom tags are removed in the final output

Reason this exists: For Codehike scrollycoding, the different steps should mark different parts of the code. To do this, you need to pass the lines that need to marked in the markdown file but this gets very quickly outdated. So instead, you can mark the lines in the code snippet itself and add a number to then link the correct number from the scrollycoding step.

Using GitHub links for your code snippets.

For example: CODE_LOAD::https://raw.githubusercontent.com/restatedev/examples/main/tutorials/tour-of-restate-typescript/src/part1/user_session.ts#<start_expire_ticket>-<end_expire_ticket>

Code snippets will be compiled and build on PRs and releases.

Details on how code snippets are parsed and inserted can be found in the code-loader.js file.

Code formatting

We use Spotless for formatting the Java code snippets. However, Spotless is quite eager on merging lines together into longer lines. This doesn't work well for the documentation sometimes because it requires horizontal scrolling. If you don't want Spotless to merge lines on formatting use // break in between the lines. The code loader will filter these out and the formatter will respect the breaks:

RestateHttpEndpointBuilder.builder()
    // break
    .bind(new TicketObject())
    // break
    .buildAndListen();

Releasing the documentation

Before releasing the documentation, update schemas and version of Restate artifacts, either:

• Automatically by executing the Pre-release updates workflow.
• Manually, as described here.

Once the branch main is ready to be released, create and push the release tag:

git checkout main
git tag -m "Documentation v0.3.0" v0.3.0
git push --tags

The tag triggers creating a draft release on Github that needs manual approval. Moreover, it will push the latest main to the production branch which triggers the deployment of the documentation.

Manually update the schemas

To update the configuration schemas, the default configuration and the Meta OpenAPI document, clone Restate and execute the following:

$ ./tools/generate.sh <PATH to Restate repo clone>

Manually update artifact versions

The config file restate.config.json contains versions of various Restate artifacts:

• TypeScript SDK: TYPESCRIPT_SDK_VERSION
• Java SDK: JAVA_SDK_VERSION
• Runtime: RESTATE_VERSION

Algolia

The documentation uses Algolia for search. The Algolia crawler runs one time per week. So if a release contains big changes to the docs (e.g. links), then it might be a good idea to run it manually:

1. Go to https://crawler.algolia.com/ and log in
2. Go to restate crawler
3. Click restart crawling. Once this is done, the search is fully up to date!