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freecodecamp/devdocs

★ 38,823RubyAudience · developerComplexity · 3/5Setup · moderate

TLDR

DevDocs is a free, offline-capable documentation browser that unifies API references for dozens of languages and frameworks in one searchable interface, so you stop jumping between separate websites while coding.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Unified docs browser
      Offline search
      Instant results
    How it works
      Ruby scraper
      JS web app
      Service worker
    Use cases
      Multi-tech dev work
      Offline reference
      Local team hosting
    Tech stack
      Ruby
      JavaScript
      Sinatra
    Setup
      Docker one-command
      devdocs.io hosted
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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Search JavaScript, Python, React, and CSS documentation simultaneously from one browser tab instead of maintaining separate bookmarks.

USE CASE 2

Access API documentation offline during travel or poor connectivity, with full offline support via a service worker.

USE CASE 3

Self-host a fast local documentation browser for your team using a single Docker command.

Tech stack

RubyJavaScriptSinatra

Getting it running

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Easiest to run via Docker, building from source requires Ruby and a Node.js environment.

In plain English

DevDocs is a web-based documentation browser that brings together the API reference documentation for dozens of programming languages, frameworks, and libraries into one unified, searchable interface. Instead of jumping between separate websites for JavaScript, Python, React, CSS, and whatever other tools you use, DevDocs lets you search all of them at once from a single page at devdocs.io, or from your own locally hosted instance. It has instant search, keyboard navigation, a dark theme, and full offline support. The project is made up of two parts. The first is a Ruby-based scraper that fetches documentation from the official websites of each supported technology, strips away navigation and styling, normalizes the formatting for consistency, and saves the result as compressed local files. The second is a client-side JavaScript web app powered by a small Sinatra server that serves those files. All searching and rendering happens in the browser, with a service worker enabling offline access. The app is intentionally lightweight: the search algorithm is kept simple to stay fast even when searching across 100,000 entries. You would use DevDocs when you want a fast, offline-capable reference tool for your everyday development work. It is particularly useful when you work with many different technologies and do not want to maintain browser bookmarks for each documentation site. Developers can run it locally via Docker with a single command. The tech stack is Ruby for the scraper and build tooling, JavaScript for the web application front-end, and Sinatra (a lightweight Ruby web framework) for the server layer.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
How do I run DevDocs locally with Docker and add offline support for Python and React documentation?
Prompt 2
I want to add documentation for a custom internal library to my self-hosted DevDocs. What do I need to write to create a new scraper?
Prompt 3
Show me how to configure DevDocs keyboard shortcuts so I can search documentation faster while coding.
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