A new presentation environment: Dynamic Documentation web application

The SDL Knowledge Center 13 introduces the Dynamic Documentation web application (Dynamic Documentation for short). Dynamic Documentation is a web application you can use to present DITA content published to Content Delivery.

Benefits of using Dynamic Documentation

Dynamic Documentation is:
  • available for implementers as a SDL GitHub project: Dita Delivery Web Application Customization examples
  • also provided in the product distribution as an example web site in the form of a WAR file (web-app.war)
  • a single page, Java web application with responsive design and mobile support
  • designed as a documentation portal
  • built on top of the services provided by Content Delivery 10.1, such as content, query/index and, user generated content (commenting/community)
  • highly extensible and customizable
This version includes the following:
  • Content Delivery's Java API which is known as a Content Interaction Library (CIL), providing access to Content Delivery services.
  • SDL Digital Experience Accelerator(DXA), version 1.8.
  • ISH modules named ISH, ISH UGC and ISH Search that are providing access to DXA functionality.

Dynamic Documentation, an example web application

When setting up your external presentation environment you can use the Dynamic Documentation to get started quickly. Dynamic Documentation is a Java web application that allows you quickly set up a working presentation environment based on the Content Delivery platform.

We built Dynamic Documentation with the following architecture:
  • Based on Content Delivery.
  • Communicates with Content Delivery via its API, which is known as a Content Interaction Library or CIL.
  • The back end includes a SDL Digital Experience Accelerator(DXA) layer, which facilitates setting up the DITA-based web application. In particular we have built and used three custom DXA modules named ISH, ISH Search and ISH UGC.
  • For the front end we designed a modern, responsive graphical user interface or GUI.

Using and upgrading Dynamic Documentation

For changes to your web application you should be aware that Dynamic Documentation is subject to a relatively fast release cycle. Your implementers are encouraged to make changes to Dynamic Documentation that can be easily maintained after upgrades. Our list of configuration changes with backward compatibility is a guide for implementers. If you make changes that are not on this list, then you take the risk that after upgrading to a newer version of Dynamic Documentation, your web application may no longer work, or may no longer work as expected. Basic configuration changes with backward compatibility include:
  • branding
  • feature flags (toggle on/off)
  • enabling/disabling widgets
  • field configuration

You can install an example web site using the product distribution WAR file (web-app.war) for Dynamic Documentation to see how Dynamic Documentation works, but to develop your own presentation web application you should work from the SDL GitHub project: https://github.com/sdl/dd-webapp-custom-examples/blob/master/docs/Getting-started.md%20.