Sidebar not displayed if no Quarto document

[mcanouil]

The sidebar is not displayed if it does not include a Quarto document even-though there is content such as external links.

Sidebar displayed	Sidebar not displayed
````qmd project: type: website website: title: "Test" page-navigation: true navbar: left: - text: "External working" href: "https://quarto.org" target: "_blank" sidebar: - title: "Dropdown" contents: - text: "External working" href: "https://quarto.org" target: "_blank" - index.qmd format: html: default ````	````qmd project: type: website website: title: "Test" page-navigation: true navbar: left: - text: "External working" href: "https://quarto.org" target: "_blank" sidebar: - title: "Dropdown" contents: - text: "External working" href: "https://quarto.org" target: "_blank" format: html: default ````

Originally posted by @mcanouil in https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/9153#issuecomment-2029528267

[cderv]

I wonder if this is related to

• https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/discussions/8869

which seems to not have been fixed by

• https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/pull/8871 (because PR problem and closed to early)

All related to change for https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/5689 regarding sidebar and id (as a sidebar with a Title will have automatically an id assigned

Reminder: the breaking change in 1.4 was a sidebar with an id will only apply to the page related and not act as a global sidebar.

[cderv]

https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/blob/6bf654a79f3efe237fa81f98b37e6c2699f22059/src/project/types/website/website-navigation.ts#L1006-L1009

When there is title, we assign an id

But then we consider that a sidebar with an id is no more a global sidebar and we apply only on containtain href...

https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/blob/6bf654a79f3efe237fa81f98b37e6c2699f22059/src/project/types/website/website-shared.ts#L344-L368

but here there is none, so the sidebar never applies

Two things here:

• Side effect of the chnage in behavior in 1.4
• I don't think we really account for sidebar with no internal content in it.

I wonder if we should reconsider some thoughts from @dragonstyle at

• https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/5689#issuecomment-1568579700

[cderv]

The problem is :

• This check with id is undefined is done several times https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/blob/6bf654a79f3efe237fa81f98b37e6c2699f22059/src/project/types/website/website-shared.ts#L344-L349
• First time it will be undefined, but then it will be computed https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/blob/6bf654a79f3efe237fa81f98b37e6c2699f22059/src/project/types/website/website-navigation.ts#L1006-L1009 and it seems the id inside navigation.sidebars will be changed.
• which will impact all future calls to sidebarForHref, as they will consider a non global sidebar

So I really think we should rethink change for

• 5689

[cderv]

The fix is breaking complex website so this needs so something is off. I am reopening and deal with this differently with more checks