HTML theme options#

In the Sphinx configuration (conf.py) file in the doc directory, you can use the html_theme_options dictionary to customize the Ansys Sphinx theme.

Show breadcrumbs#

Showing breadcrumbs at the top of your documentation pages makes navigation easier. Breadcrumbs are shown by setting "show_breadcrumbs": True. To add additional root breadcrumbs, "additional_breadcrumbs" is set to a list of tuples in this form: ("Link text", "url").

This html_theme_options dictionary show breadcrumbs, including a root breadcrumb for the documentation landing page for the Ansys repository:

html_theme_options = {
    "github_url": "https://github.com/ansys/ansys-sphinx-theme",
    "show_prev_next": False,
    "show_breadcrumbs": True,
    "additional_breadcrumbs": [
        ("PyAnsys", "https://docs.pyansys.com/"),
    ],
}

When you are on the landing page for your documentation, the breadcrumb shows the title for this page. However, Sphinx cannot access this title from other documentation pages. Thus, after html_theme_options dictionary, you must set html_short_title to the display text to use for this breadcrumb.

To ensure a consistent user experience, always set the html_short_title (or optionally html_title if html_short_title is not used) to the library name.

For example, in the conf.py file for the Ansys Sphinx Theme, this line is added after the html_theme_options dictionary:

html_short_title = html_title = "Ansys Sphinx Theme"

If you want the title for your documentation’s main index.rst file to show the version, include |version| in the title:

html_short_title = html_title = "Ansys Sphinx Theme |version|"

Add and hide icons in the navigation bar#

The navigation bar shows two icons on the right by default. The first is for switching between light and dark modes. The second is for going to the library’s GitHub repository.

  • For comprehensive information on adding custom link behavior, see Add custom attributes to icon links in the PyData Theme documentation.

  • For comprehensive information on how to use Font Awesome to add icons, see How To Add Icons in the Font Awesome documentation.

The following sections explain how to add icons and hide icons.

Add icons#

In the conf.py file, the html_theme_options dictionary has a child icon_links dictionary. To add icons to the navigation bar, add them to the icon_links dictionary. For each icon to add, specify its name, the associated url, the icon, and the type.

This example adds an icon for sending an email:

html_theme_options = {
 "icon_links": [
     dict(name="Mail", url="mailto:me", icon="fas fa-envelope")
 ],
 ...
}

Hide icons#

To hide icons so that they do not show in the navigation bar, add their names to the hidden_icons dictionary:

html_theme_options = {
    "hidden_icons": ["GitHub"],
    ...
}

If you want to hide all icons, use the show_icons Boolean variable:

html_theme_options = {
    "show_icons": False,
    ...
}

Use MeiliSearch#

MeiliSearch is an open source search engine that allows developers to easily integrate search functionality into their applications.

To use MeiliSearch in your documentation, in the conf.py file, a child dictionary named use_meilisearch``is added to the ``html_theme_options dictionary.

This dictionary contains these keys, in the order given:

  1. host: Host name of your MeiliSearch instance. If no value is provided, the default public host for PyAnsys is used: https://backend.search.pyansys.com on port 7700. If added security is needed, you can use the os.getenv() function to set the instance using an environment variable.

  2. api_key: API key for your MeiliSearch instance. If no value is provided, the default public API key for PyAnsys is used. If added security is needed, you can use the os.getenv() function to set the key using an environment variable.

  3. index_uids: Dictionary that provides the mapping between the unique identifier (UID) of an index and its corresponding user-friendly name. Each key-value pair in the dictionary represents an index, with the key being the index UID and the value being the index name. The index UID points to an index on the server.

Here is an example of how to configure MeiliSearch for use in the conf.py file:

import os

use_meilisearch = {
    "host": os.getenv("MEILISEARCH_HOST_NAME", ""),
    "api_key": os.getenv("MEILISEARCH_API_KEY", ""),
    "index_uids": {
        "index-uid of current project": "index name to display",
        "another-index-uid": "index name to display",
    },
}

If your project features multiple documentation versions, it’s crucial to adapt the index_uids mapping to accommodate different versions. To ensure seamless search integration across versions, use the following format to dynamically generate version-specific index UIDs:

from ansys_sphinx_theme import convert_version_to_pymeilisearch

use_meilisearch = {
    "api_key": os.getenv("MEILISEARCH_PUBLIC_API_KEY", ""),
    "index_uids": {
        f"ansys-sphinx-theme-v{convert_version_to_pymeilisearch(__version__)}": "ansys-sphinx-theme",
    },
}

Here is an example configuration of how to configure MeiliSearch in the conf.py file for the Ansys Sphinx Theme:

import os

html_theme_options = {
    "use_meilisearch": {
        "index_uids": {
            "ansys-sphinx-theme-sphinx-docs": "ansys-sphinx-theme",
            "pyansys-docs-all-public": "PyAnsys",
        },
    },
}

With these options set, MeiliSearch is available for performing searches of your documentation.

Note

If you do not set the use_meilisearch dictionary, the Ansys Sphinx Theme uses the default search functionality inherited from the PyData Sphinx Theme.

Cheat sheets#

If a cheat sheet has been created for your PyAnsys library, you can show a thumbnail image of it in the left navigation pane of one or more sections of your documentation.

In the html_theme_options dictionary, you add a child dictionary named cheatsheet that contain these keys, in the order given:

  1. url: URL of the cheat sheet.

  2. title: Title of the cheat sheet.

  3. thumbnail: URL of the thumbnail image for the cheat sheet.

  4. needs_download: Whether to download the cheat sheet locally during the documentation build. The default is False, in which case the cheat sheet is accessed directly from the provided URL. If True, the cheat sheet is downloaded to the _build/html/_static/ directory and accessed from here.

  5. pages: List of names for the reStructuredText (RST) files to show the cheat sheet on. If no list is provided, the cheat sheet is shown in the left navigation pane of the main index.rst file.

Here is an example of how to add the cheatsheet dictionary to the html_theme_options` dictionary:

html_theme_options = (
    {
        "cheatsheet": {
            "url": "<URL of the cheat sheet>",
            "title": "<title of the cheat sheet>",
            "thumbnail": "<URL of the thumbnail image>",
            "needs_download": True,  # True if you want to download and access the cheat sheet locally
            "pages": "<list of names for the pages to include the cheat sheet on>",  # Optional
        },
    },
)

Here is an example of how to show a thumbnail of a PyMAPDL cheat sheet in the left navigation pane of its main index.rst file and the learning.rst file in its “Getting started” section:

html_theme_options = (
    {
        "cheatsheet": {
            "url": "https://cheatsheets.docs.pyansys.com/pymapdl_cheat_sheet.pdf",
            "title": "PyMAPDL cheat sheet",
            "thumbnail": "https://cheatsheets.docs.pyansys.com/pymapdl_cheat_sheet.png",
            "needs_download": True,
            "pages": ["index", "getting_started/learning"],
        },
    },
)

Note

If you set "needs_download": True", you should provide the ``html_static_path option in the conf.py file to specify the location for downloading the cheat sheet to.

For example, if you want to download the cheat sheet to the _build/html/_static/ directory, you should add the following line in the conf.py file:

html_static_path = ["_static"]