Configuration

Pull request previews

PR previews offer a way to preview changes from pull requests (PRs) before merging code to a production branch. This is useful for reviewing documentation changes before publishing them to your live documentation site.

Here’s an example of a PR preview: https://fern-preview-fa86d0dd-7763-4d5f-84d8-6d630dc1742a.docs.buildwithfern.com

Usage

$fern generate --docs <instance-url> --preview

Example

$fern generate --docs fern.docs.buildwithfern.com --preview
>
>Download @fern/registry Downloading manifest...
>Download @fern/registry Downloading...
>Download @fern/registry Parsing...
>[docs]: Published docs to https://fern-preview-3e0e506f-d277-4f13-be63-e609b7320db1.docs.buildwithfern.com
>┌─
>│ ✓  Download @fern/registry
>│ ✓  fern.docs.buildwithfern.com
>└─

Usage in GitHub Actions

The following is a GitHub Action workflow that generates a preview URL for every pull request.

.github/workflows/preview-docs.yml
1name: preview-docs
2
3on:
4  pull_request:
5    branches:
6      - main  
7
8jobs:
9  generate-preview-docs:
10    name: Generate Documentation Preview
11    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
12
13    steps:
14      - name: Checkout repository
15        uses: actions/checkout@v4
16
17      - name: Setup Node.js
18        uses: actions/setup-node@v3
19        with:
20          node-version: '18'
21
22      - name: Install Fern
23        run: npm install -g fern-api
24
25      - name: Generate Documentation Preview with Fern
26        env:
27          FERN_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.FERN_TOKEN }}
28        run: fern generate --docs --preview

Preview links do not expire. However, the time to live (TTL) may be subject to change in the future.

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