📦 How to import Rhyla (Express client)

⚡ JavaScript — Quick start

Importing and using the Rhyla Express helper is straightforward:

// Import the main client
import express from 'express';
import RhylaClient from 'rhyla';

const app = express();

// Serve the built documentation at the /docs path
RhylaClient.expressConfig(app, '/docs');

✅ Prerequisites

• You must build the static documentation before serving it. Run the CLI build command in your project root:

rhyla build

• The server serves the files produced by that build. By default Rhyla writes output to ./dist.

📁 Using a custom output directory (distDir)

If you changed the build output directory, pass the same path to expressConfig using the distDir option. Note: distDir must point to the built output — pointing to source files or templates will not work.

// Example: the build was configured to write to './public/docs'
RhylaClient.expressConfig(app, '/docs', { distDir: './public/docs' });

expressConfig will also try to read config.json inside the build output to detect any base path defined at build time. If a base is present in the built config.json, expressConfig will prefer the explicit base you pass as first argument when present.

⚠️ Important note about base path

ℹ️ Notes

• By default Rhyla's built site uses a base of / (unless you configured a different base before running the build). The build process generates routes and asset paths according to that base.

• Important: for the server to serve the built files correctly, the base that was used at build-time (the base in the generated config.json) and the mount path you pass as the second argument to expressConfig must match exactly. In other words, if the built site expects / you must mount it at /; if the built site expects /docs you must mount it at /docs.

• If they do not match (for example you build with the default / but call RhylaClient.expressConfig(app, '/docs')), the paths prepared by the build will not align with the server mount, causing broken asset URLs and routing problems.

Example:

// Build-time: config.base is '/' (default)
// Wrong — this will likely break paths because the build expects '/'
RhylaClient.expressConfig(app, '/docs');

// Correct — mount at the same base the site was built with
RhylaClient.expressConfig(app, '/');

Recommendation: set the intended base in your Rhyla config before running rhyla build, or mount the built site using the same base you built it with.

• Mount the docs at the same path you expect users to visit (for example /docs).
• expressConfig injects a small HTML meta tag so client-side scripts can read the effective base path at runtime.
• Make sure you run rhyla build each time you update documentation content so the served files are up to date.