title

description

author

ms.author

ms.date

ms.topic

ms.prod

helpviewer_keywords

ARTICLE TITLE

GITHUB USERNAME

MICROSOFT ALIAS OF INTERNAL OWNER

CREATION/UPDATE DATE - mm/dd/yyyy

TOPIC TYPE

PRODUCT VALUE

OFFLINE BOOK INDEX ENTRIES

Metadata and Markdown Template

This dotnet/docs template contains examples of Markdown syntax, as well as guidance on setting the metadata. To get the most of it, you must view both the raw Markdown and the rendered view (for instance, the raw Markdown shows the metadata block, while the rendered view does not).

When creating a Markdown file, you should copy this template to a new file, fill out the metadata as specified below, set the H1 heading above to the title of the article, and delete the content.

Metadata

The full metadata block is above (in the raw Markdown), divided into required fields and optional fields. Some key notes:

You must have a space between the colon (:) and the value for a metadata element.
If an optional metadata element doesn't have a value, comment out the element with a # or remove it (don't leave it blank or use "na"). If you're adding a value to an element that was commented out, be sure to remove the #.
Colons in a value (for example, a title) break the metadata parser. In this case, surround the title with double quotes (for example, title: "Writing .NET Core console apps: An advanced step-by-step guide").
title: Appears in search engine results. The title shouldn't be identical to the title in your H1 heading, and it should contain 60 characters or less.
description: Summarizes the content of the article. It's usually shown in the search results page, but it isn't used for search ranking. Its length should be 115-145 characters including spaces.
author, manager, ms.author: The author field should contain the GitHub username of the author, not his/her alias. The "manager" and "ms.author" fields, on the other hand, should contain Microsoft aliases.
ms.topic: The topic type. The most common value is article. Other common values used are get-started-article, managed-reference, and reference.
ms.devlang defines the language filter displayed for the topic. Some of the supported values are: dotnet, cpp, csharp, fsharp, vb and xml.
ms.prod: Product identification used for BI purposes. Possible values are .net-core for topics on the .NET Core Guide, .net-framework for topics on the .NET Framework Guide and .net for all other topics.
ms.technology: Additional BI classification. Some of the supported values are: devlang-csharp for C# topics, devlang-fsharp for F# topics, and devlang-visual-basic for VB topics. For other guides, the values will vary, so ask a member of the team for guidance.
helpviewer_keywords: Entries are used for the offline books index (functionality in Visual Studio).

Basic Markdown, GFM, and special characters

All basic and GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM) is supported. For more information on these, see:

Baseline Markdown syntax
GFM documentation

Markdown uses special characters such as *, `, and # for formatting. If you wish to include one of these characters in your content, you must do one of two things:

Put a backslash before the special character to "escape" it (for example, \* for a *)
Use the HTML entity code for the character (for example, * for a *).

File name

File names use the following rules:

Contain only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens.
No spaces or punctuation characters. Use the hyphens to separate words and numbers in the file name.
Use action verbs that are specific, such as develop, buy, build, troubleshoot. No -ing words.
No small words - don't include a, and, the, in, or, etc.
Must be in Markdown and use the .md file extension.
Keep file names reasonably short. They are part of the URL for your articles.

Headings

Use sentence-style capitalization. Always capitalize:

The first word of a heading.
The word following a colon in a title or heading (for example, "How to: Sort an array").

Headings should be done using atx-style, that is, use 1-6 hash characters (#) at the start of the line to indicate a heading, corresponding to HTML headings levels H1 through H6. Examples of first- and second-level headers are used above.

There must be only one first-level heading (H1) in your topic, which will be displayed as the on-page title.

If your heading finishes with a # character, you need to add an extra # character in the end in order for the title to render correctly. For example, # Async Programming in F# #.

Second-level headings will generate the on-page TOC that appears in the "In this article" section underneath the on-page title.

Third-level heading

Fourth-level heading

Fifth level heading

Sixth-level heading

Text styling

Italics Use for files, folders, paths (for long items, split onto their own line), new terms.

Bold Use for UI elements.

Code Use for inline code, language keywords, NuGet package names, command-line commands, database table and column names, and URLs that you don't want to be clickable.

Links

Internal Links

To link to a header in the same Markdown file (also known as anchor links), you'll need to find out the id of the header you're trying to link to. To confirm the ID, view the source of the rendered article, find the id of the header (for example, id="blockquote"), and link using # + id (for example, #blockquote). The id is auto-generated based on the header text. So, for example, given a unique section named ## Step 2, the id would look like this id="step-2".

Example: Chapter 1

To link to a Markdown file in the same repo, use relative links, including the ".md" at the end of the filename.

Example: Readme file
Example: Welcome to .NET

To link to a header in a Markdown file in the same repo, use relative linking + hashtag linking.

Example: .NET Community

External Links

To link to an external file, use the full URL as the link.

Example: GitHub

If a URL appears in a Markdown file, it will be transformed into a clickable link.

Example: http://www.github.com

Links to APIs

The build system has some extensions that allow us to link to .NET APIs without having to use external links.
When linking to an API, you can use its unique identifier (UID) that is auto-generated from the source code.

The UID equates to the fully qualified class and member name. If you add a * after the UID, the link then represents the overload page and not a specific API. For example, you can use that when you want to link to the List<T>.BinarySearch Method page in a generic way instead of a specific overload such as List<T>.BinarySearch(T, IComparer<T>).

You can use one of the following syntax:

Auto-link: <xref:UID> or <xref:UID?displayProperty=nameWithType>

The displayProperty query parameter produces a fully qualified link text. By default, link text shows only the member or type name.

Markdown link: [link text](xref:UID)

Use when you want to customize the link text displayed.

Examples:

<xref:System.String> renders as String
<xref:System.String?displayProperty=nameWithType> renders as System.String
[String class](xref:System.String) renders as String class

For more information about using this notation, see Using cross reference.

Right now, there is no easy way to find the UIDs. The best way to find the UID for an API is to view the source for the API page you want to link to and find the ms.assetid value. Individual overload values are not shown in the source. We're working on having a better system in the future.

When the UID contains the special characters `, # or *, the UID value needs to be HTML encoded as %60, %23 and %2A respectively. You'll sometimes see parentheses encoded but it's not a requirement.

Examples:

System.Threading.Tasks.Task`1 becomes System.Threading.Tasks.Task%601
System.Exception.#ctor becomes System.Exception.%23ctor
System.Lazy`1.#ctor(System.Threading.LazyThreadSafetyMode) becomes System.Lazy%601.%23ctor%28System.Threading.LazyThreadSafetyMode%29

Lists

Ordered lists

This
Is
An
Ordered
List

Ordered list with an embedded list

Here
comes
an
embedded
1. Miss Scarlett
2. Professor Plum
ordered
list

Unordered Lists

This
is
a
bulleted
list

Unordered list with an embedded list

This
bulleted
list
- Mrs. Peacock
- Mr. Green
contains
other
1. Colonel Mustard
2. Mrs. White
lists

Horizontal rule

Tables

Tables	Are	Cool
col 3 is	right-aligned	$1600
col 2 is	centered	$12
col 1 is default	left-aligned	$1

You can use a Markdown table generator tool to help creating them more easily.

Code

The best way to include code is to include snippets from a working sample. Create your sample following the instructions in the contributing guide.

You can include the code using include syntax:

[!code-csharp[<title>](<pathToFile>#<RegionName)]

The example above shows C# syntax, but other languages are supported. Use code-fsharp for F# samples; use code-vbnet for Visual Basic samples. Other languages that are supported are:

C++: code-cpp
HTML: code-html
JavaScript: code-javascript
Powershell: code-ps
SQL: code-sql
XML: code-xml

The text you place for <title> shows up as a rollover on the text. The <pathToFile> is the path to the source file. The <RegionName> should be a region in your source code that should be included. Use the #region and #endregion preprocessor syntax to specify the region of code to include.

For cases where regions don't work, you can specify the start and end of a snippet using an XML element name in a single line comment. For example, you could write this in C#:

// <CodeToInclude>
int j = 5;
int i ; 10;
int sum = i + j;
// </CodeToInclude>

In other languages, use the comment syntax for that language. Finally, you can use line numbers: #L1-L10 would include lines 1 through 10. We discourage line numbers because they are very brittle.

Including snippets from full programs ensures that all code runs through our Continuous Integration (CI) system. However, if you need to show something that causes compile time or runtime errors, you can use inline code blocks.

Inline code blocks with language identifier

Use three backticks (```) + a language ID to apply language-specific color coding to a code block. Here is the list of supported languages showing the markdown label for each language ID.

Supported Languages

Name	Markdown Label
Azure CLI	azurecli
AzCopy	azcopy
C++	cpp
C#	csharp
F#	fsharp
JavaScript	javascript
JSON	json
NodeJS	nodejs
Objective-C	objc
PHP	php
PowerShell	powershell
Python	python
Ruby	ruby
SQL / T-SQL	sql
Swift	swift
VB	vb
XAML	xaml
XML	xml

The following are examples of code blocks using the language IDs for C# (```csharp), Python (```python), and PowerShell (```powershell).

C♯

using System;
namespace HelloWorld
{
    class Hello 
    {
        static void Main() 
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");

            // Keep the console window open in debug mode.
            Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit.");
            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}

Python

friends = ['john', 'pat', 'gary', 'michael']
for i, name in enumerate(friends):
    print "iteration {iteration} is {name}".format(iteration=i, name=name)

PowerShell

Clear-Host
$Directory = "C:\Windows\"
$Files = Get-Childitem $Directory -recurse -Include *.log `
-ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Generic code block

Use three backticks (```) for generic code block coding.

The recommended approach is to use code blocks with language identifiers as explained in the previous section to ensure the proper syntax highlighting in the documentation site. Use generic code blocks only when necessary.

function fancyAlert(arg) {
    if(arg) {
        $.docs({div:'#foo'})
    }
}

Blockquotes

The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended. Here on the Equator, in the continent which would one day be known as Africa, the battle for existence had reached a new climax of ferocity, and the victor was not yet in sight. In this barren and desiccated land, only the small or the swift or the fierce could flourish, or even hope to survive.

Images

Static Image or Animated gif

Linked Image

Videos

Currently, you can embed both Channel 9 and YouTube videos with the following syntax:

Channel 9

> [!VIDEO <channel9_video_link>]

To get the video's correct URL, select the Embed tab below the video frame, and copy the URL from the <iframe> element. For example:

> [!VIDEO https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/dotnet/NET-Core-20-Released/player]

YouTube

To get the video's correct URL, right-click on the video, select Copy Embed Code, and copy the URL from the <iframe> element.

> [!VIDEO <youtube_video_link>]

For example:

> [!VIDEO https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q2mMbjw6cLA]

docs.microsoft extensions

docs.microsoft provides a few additional extensions to GitHub Flavored Markdown.

Alerts

It's important to use the following alert styles so they render with the proper style in the documentation site. However, the rendering engine on GitHub doesn't diferentiate them.

Note

This is a NOTE

Warning

This is a WARNING

Tip

This is a TIP

Important

This is IMPORTANT

And they'll render like this:

Includes

You can embed the Markdown of one file into another using an include.

[!INCLUDEsample include file]

Buttons

[!div class="button"] button links

You can see an example of buttons in action at the Intune docs.

Selectors

[!div class="op_single_selector"]

macOS
Windows

You can see an example of selectors in action at the Intune docs.

Step-By-Steps

[!div class="step-by-step"] Pre Next

You can see an example of step-by-steps in action at the Advanced Threat Analytics docs.

Files

template.md

Latest commit

History