This article was published on Tuesday, January 24, 2023 by Dimitri POSTOLOV @ The Guild Blog
What's Nextra
Nextra – Next.js Static Site Generator framework that works on top of Next.js
and React, uses Tailwind CSS and
other amazing open-source libraries. It lets you create your
powerful markdown content using a theme package.
Currently, Nextra contains two official themes:
-
nextra-theme-docstheme for documentation -
nextra-theme-blogtheme for your simple blog
But you can provide your own theme to fully customize to your needs.
What's New
MDX 2 Support
Migration to MDX 2 comes with improved performance, supporting any JSX
runtime and JavaScript expression inside your markdown pages.
```mdx filename="Markdown"
import Hero from '@/components/hero'
Current year - {new Date().getFullYear()}
#### Markdown Import
In case of reusing some duplicated content you can export and import your markdown files.
```mdx filename="task-list.mdx"
- [x] Code
- [x] Sleep
- [ ] Eat
and import in your MDX page:
```mdx filename="page.mdx"
import TaskList from './task-list.mdx'
### Support Next.js 13
Nextra 2 comes with support for the latest **Next.js 13** version and also up to Next.js 9!
### Images and Links Optimization
Static images are always optimized with `<NextImage />` component, internal links are replaced with
`<NextLink />` component, external links will have `target="_blank"` and `rel="noreferrer"` and will
inform screen readers about opening a link in a new tab.
`<NextImage />` will prevent to have layout shifts on your page. Instantiate (client-side)
navigation would be done with `<NextLink />`.
```text filename="Markdown"
[Learn more](/more)
[See examples](https://github.com/shuding/nextra/tree/main/examples)
will be compiled to:
import Image from 'next/image'
import Link from 'next/link'
import nextraImage from '../../public/hero.png'
function MDXContent() {
return (
<>
<Image src={nextraImage} alt="Hero" />
<Link href="/more">Learn more</Link>
<a
href="https://github.com/shuding/nextra/tree/main/examples"
target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer"
>
See examples<span className="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span>
</a>
</>
)
}
export default MDXContent
Extensible with rehype/remark Plugins
You can extend Nextra with any of rehype/remark plugins, just pass them to the nextra
function.
```js filename="next.config.js" {7-9}
import nextra from 'nextra'
import remarkMdxDisableExplicitJsx from 'remark-mdx-disable-explicit-jsx'
const withNextra = nextra({
theme: 'nextra-theme-docs',
themeConfig: './theme.config.jsx',
remarkPlugins: [
[remarkMdxDisableExplicitJsx, { whiteList: ['table', 'thead', 'tbody', 'tr', 'th', 'td'] }]
],
rehypePlugins: []
})
export default withNextra()
### Remote Markdown
Rendering remote markdown is simple, you will need:
1. Install `next-mdx-remote` and import `MDXRemote` component
2. Compile your markdown raw string using `compileMdx` from `nextra/compile` in `getStaticProps()`
3. Provide your compiled result code to `props.ssg`
4. Get data from SSG with `useSSG` hook from `nextra/ssg`
5. Provide compiled result code for `MDXRemote` via `compiledSource` prop
6. Provide `components` from `useMDXComponents` hook from `nextra/mdx` for `MDXRemote` to prevent
layout shifts
```mdx filename="Remote Nextra Readme" showLineNumbers {1,9,12,20,22}
import { MDXRemote } from 'next-mdx-remote' {/* 1 */}
import { compileMdx } from 'nextra/compile'
import { useSSG } from 'nextra/ssg'
import { useMDXComponents } from 'nextra/mdx'
export const getStaticProps = async () => {
const response = await fetch('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/shuding/nextra/main/README.md')
const markdown = await response.text()
const mdx = await compileMdx(markdown, { defaultShowCopyCode: true }) // 2
return {
props: {
ssg: mdx.result // 3
},
// Revalidate at most once every 1 hour
revalidate: 60 * 60
}
}
export const NextraReadme = () => {
const compiledSource = useSSG() // 4
const components = useMDXComponents()
return <MDXRemote compiledSource={compiledSource} components={components} /> // 5-6
}
<NextraReadme />
Nextra Theme Docs Features
nextra-theme-docs was completely redesigned to be more flexible and configurable for all of your
needs.
Various Customization
Here is an overview of different options for customization elements such as:
- Banner
- Header (logo / chat icon / project icon)
- Footer
-
<head />content and Next SEO props - Various search / sidebar / TOC options
- Pagination on page
- Dark mode
- Edit page link
- Hue of the primary theme color
- 404/500 page
They could be configured in your theme.config.jsx file.
Read more about all available options.
Builtin Full-Text Search
Full-text search is powered by FlexSearch and Nextra
will index all of your pages at build time ⚡.
New Syntax Highlighting
Prismjs was replaced by Shiki and
rehype-pretty-code.
Below is an example of a code block with a filename, line numbers, word highlighting and line
highlighting:
````md filename="Markdown"
jsx filename="My File" showLineNumbers /App/ {2}
function App() {
return <div>Hello</div>
}
`
will be rendered as:
```jsx filename="My File" showLineNumbers /App/ {2}
function App() {
return <div>Hello</div>
}
```
#### Next SEO Builtin
Out of the box, `nextra-theme-docs` has Next SEO installed. By default, in the front matter you can
set `title`, `description`, `canonical` and `openGraph` and they will be passed directly to the
`<NextSeo />` component.
```md filename="Markdown"
---
title: "Nextra 2"
description: "Nextra – Next.js Static Site Generator"
---
```
will be passed to Next SEO and rendered on the page as:
```html
<head>
<title>Nextra 2</title>
<meta name="og:title" content="Nextra 2" />
<meta name="description" content="Nextra – Next.js Static Site Generator" />
<meta name="og:description" content="Nextra – Next.js Static Site Generator" />
</head>
```
<Callout>
You can manually pass Next SEO props with `useNextSeoProps` theme option. [Read
more](https://nextra.site/docs/docs-theme/theme-configuration#seo-options) in the docs.
</Callout>
#### I18n Support
`nextra-theme-docs` comes with support i18n in your website.
To use it, provide Next.js' `i18n` field with `locales` and `defaultLocale` setup:
```js filename="next.config.js"
export default withNextra({
i18n: {
locales: ['en-US', 'fr-FR'],
defaultLocale: 'en-US'
}
})
```
Add Nextra's middleware:
```js filename="middleware.js"
export { locales as middleware } from 'nextra/locales'
```
Create your `_meta` and page files with locales suffixes:
```text
├── pages
│ ├── _meta.en-US.json
│ ├── _meta.fr-FR.json
│ ├── index.en-US.mdx
│ ├── index.fr-FR.mdx
```
```mdx filename="index.en-US.mdx"
# 🇺🇸 Hello Nextra 2
```
```mdx filename="index.fr-FR.mdx"
# 🇫🇷 Bonjour Nextra 2
```
[Learn more](https://nextra.site/docs/guide/i18n) on docs.
#### LTR/RTL Direction Support
Your website can be fully mirrored with RTL direction. All that you need it provides `dir: 'rtl'` in
your `theme.config.jsx` file.
<NextImage src={nextraRtl} className="mt-6 rounded-3xl border border-gray-700" alt="Example of Nextra page with RTL direction" loading="lazy" />
#### A11y
Accessibility is all, Nextra respects system preferences, animation will be reduced with
`reduce-motion` mode, colors will be adjusted in `contrast-more` mode.
<NextImage src={nextraContrastMode} className="mt-6 rounded-3xl border border-gray-700" alt="Example of Nextra page with contrast mode enabled" loading="lazy" />
## Conclusion
[The Guild](/) discovered Nextra 2 from the first betas and actively participated in the development
and improvement of this library. I (Dimitri) become
[an official maintainer](https://nextra.site/about#team) of this library on par with Nextra creator
amazing [Shu Ding](https://github.com/shuding/nextra) from Vercel.
In the end, we migrated all our projects' documentation to Nextra, which provides a better setup and
documentation design than our previous `guild-docs` package. Alongside we added Giscus comments at
the end of each page that synchronizes with GitHub discussions.
We receive a bunch of positive feedback and much more contributions and fixing mistakes in our docs
from our community ❤️.
<Callout emoji="🍭">In fact, even this blog uses Nextra 2 and `nextra-theme-docs`. 👀</Callout>
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