Use relative URLs instead of absolute ones so that generated websites work everywhere

[nicosomb]

Hi there!

I use https://github.com/CouscousPHP/Template-Dark for wallabag documentation.

When I generate the documentation locally (with couscous generate), links in the menu are external links. My main problem is that I want to embed the generated documentation into wallabag archive (https://github.com/wallabag/documentation/issues/65).

Nicolas

[mnapoli]

Hi!

Mmh I think I understand. There is the baseUrl variable that can be set in couscous.yml however:

• I don't know what happens if set to something empty (i.e. does that work when opening the html files from disk?)
• it's not practical because it means changing it on and off when deploying vs generating for local usage…

Here is an idea: a new CLI option to generate that allows to set a variable. That way you could do for example:

couscous generate --var baseUrl=

That would set the variable to null (by overriding couscous.yml).

Do you think that would be a solution?

[nicosomb]

I don't know what happens if set to something empty (i.e. does that work when opening the html files from disk?)

If I set to empty, I have no CSS.
If I set to ".", I have CSS only on index.

[mnapoli]

Ah right that makes sense, all links (incl. resources) are loaded with an absolute path (that's why we need the baseUrl). To make it relative might be quite some work I guess as we need to compute it based on the directory/subdirectory of each page, but it might be better in the long term as it would remove the need for baseUrl completely.

[wysow]

@nicosomb @mnapoli and what about using something like baseUrl: https://www.wallabag.org/documentation so that the generated Wallabag documentation can be embed in the official Wallabag website?

[mnapoli]

@wysow I think the issue is that when using a baseUrl it only works once: where it's deployed. If you want to let users download the generated HTML documentation, then all links will point to the online version.

Ideally we should generate relative links I guess, or we could also pass a custom base url when generating so that we can generate multiple versions of the same documentation without having to edit couscous.yml.

By the way IIRC @nicosomb has migrated Wallabag's documentation to ReadTheDocs, but I guess this issue can happen with other users too.

[wysow]

OK I see what's needed here... (and BTW the Wallabag doc seems to use Couscous at this time http://doc.wallabag.org/ ;))

[mnapoli]

@wysow see https://github.com/wallabag/documentation/pull/90 it's probably WIP