How to get a single shared sidebar for docs with multi-instance?

[filipesilva-l]

Hi,

I want to have multiple docs for different products that could be on different versions using the docs multi-instance feature. But, I'd also like to have a single sidebar for all these kinds of documentations so that every docs would show up in a single sidebar.

This question on Stack Overflow summarizes the problem perfectly so I'll borrow it's examples:

Suppose that I have a file structure like this:

📂 ./ (Docusaurus root)
 ├ 📂 android/ (Android-specific content, versioned, default docs dir)
 │  ├ 📄 initialization.md
 │  ├ 📄 authentication.md
 │  └ 📄 configuration.md
 ├ 📂 ios/ (iOS-specific content, versioned, via plugin-content-docs)
 │  ├ 📄 initialization.md
 │  ├ 📄 authentication.md
 │  └ 📄 configuration.md
 ├ 📂 common/ (“global” content, unversioned, via plugin-content-docs)
 │  ├ 📄 changelog.md
 │  └ 📄 license.md
 ├ 📂 versioned_docs/ (Android-specific “past versions” content)
 │  └ 📂 version-1.0
 │     ├ 📄 initialization.md
 │     ├ 📄 authentication.md
 │     └ 📄 configuration.md
 ├ 📂 versioned_sidebars/ (Android-specific “past versions” sidebars)
 │  └ 📄 version-1.0-sidebars.json
 ├ 📂 ios_versioned_docs/ (iOS-specific “past versions” content)
 │  ├ 📂 version-1.0
 │  │  ├ 📄 initialization.md
 │  │  ├ 📄 authentication.md
 │  │  └ 📄 configuration.md
 │  └ 📂 version-1.1
 │     ├ 📄 initialization.md
 │     ├ 📄 authentication.md
 │     └ 📄 configuration.md
 ├ 📂 ios_versioned_sidebars/ (iOS-specific “past versions” sidebars)
 │  ├ 📄 version-1.0-sidebars.json
 │  └ 📄 version-1.1-sidebars.json
 ├ 📄 sidebars.js
 ├ 📄 ios_sidebars.js
 ├ 📄 common_sidebars.js
 ├ 📄 versions.json
 ├ 📄 ios_versions.json
 ├ 📄 docusaurus.config.js
 └ … (other files irrelevant for this issue)

I'd like to map it to a sidebar in all my documents like this:

Android
  Initialization
  Authentication
  Configuration
iOS
  Initialization
  Authentication
  Configuration
Common
  Changelog
  License

Is this possible to achieve?

Thanks in advance.

[slorber]

Unfortunately this is not possible. Plugins (and their instances) are sandboxed so docs plugin 1 can only render data coming from docs plugin 1.

In 2025 I'd like to ship React Server Components support (#9089) and it should allow to seamlessly interleave data from plugin1 to a page created by plugin2, and vice versa. But it will take a while before we support this.

[filipesilva-l]

Hi, thanks for the reply.

Would you like me to open an issue to track this behavior?

[slorber]

No because this will be solved by RSCs indirectly.

We don't plan to have a first-class feature to do that. Instead you'll be able to achieve this using docusaurus swizzle: this will remain a power user feature that requires you to tweak our React code.