#Publishing a library as a site

The web part renders one document. A folder of documents is a different problem: somebody has to decide what the menu says, what a category landing page lists, and what address each document lives at.

MarkstrataSiteBuilder is a PowerShell module that does that part. It is a separate tool with its own repository and its own release cycle, not something inside the .sppkg, and the web part does not need it. Reach for it when a handful of pages has turned into a library somebody has to find their way around.

Install-Module MarkstrataSiteBuilderInitialize-MarkstrataConfig          # asks for the site and the folderConnect-MarkstrataSite               # offers to create the app registration it signs in withInvoke-MarkstrataRefresh             # builds the whole site

The module on GitHub

#What it builds

One page, not one page per document. A single renderer page holds one Markstrata web part and takes the document to show from its query string, which is the ?strataDoc= address this web part already answers to:

https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/docs/Wiki.aspx?strataDoc=Networking/VPN Setup.md

A library of five hundred documents is still one page. Adding a document does not mean creating a page, and deleting one does not leave a dead page behind.

A menu from the folder structure. Top-level folders become categories, and categories are gathered into named groups so the header stays readable: a SharePoint menu shows five or six entries before hiding the rest behind a ... nobody clicks.

Generated index pages. Each category gets an index listing its documents and its subfolders. They carry no document counts, because a count written onto a generated page is wrong the moment somebody adds a document without re-running.

Links that survive. Internal links can be written as wiki links, which address the document rather than a page address, so they keep working when pages move.

#What it asks for

The local folder is normally a synced copy of the library, which is the whole authoring model: edit a file in your editor, save, and OneDrive carries it up. Editing a document needs nothing else, because the page renders the file rather than holding a copy of it. Adding, moving or renaming one changes the indexes and the menu, so that is when it is re-run.

#Unattended runs

A scheduled refresh with nobody signed in uses an app-only registration with a certificate, granted Sites.Selected and then access to the target site alone rather than Sites.FullControl.All. A documentation publisher has no business being able to rewrite every site in a tenant, and a leaked certificate should reach exactly one site.

#Where the line is

Markstrata renders markdown inside a page. The site builder arranges pages around it. They are versioned separately and either one works without the other: a web part on a page you made yourself needs no module, and the module does nothing a person could not do by hand in the SharePoint UI, slowly, every time a document moves.

Both are MIT licensed.