---
title: 'Naming components and hierarchy'
sidebar:
order: 7
title: Naming components and hierarchy
---
Storybook provides a powerful way to organize your stories, giving you the necessary tools to categorize, search, and filter your stories based on your organization's needs and preferences.
## Structure and hierarchy
When organizing your Storybook, there are two methods of structuring your stories: **implicit** and **explicit**. The [implicit method](../configure/user-interface/sidebar-and-urls.mdx#csf-30-auto-titles) involves relying upon the physical location of your stories to position them in the sidebar, while the [explicit method](#naming-stories) involves utilizing the `title` parameter to place the story.
Based on how you structure your Storybook, you can see that the story hierarchy is made up of various parts:
* **Category**: The top-level grouping of stories and documentation pages generated by Storybook
* **Folder**: A mid-level organizational unit that groups components and stories in the sidebar, representing a feature or section of your application
* **Component**: A low-level organizational unit representing the component that the story is testing
* **Docs**: The automatically generated [documentation page](../writing-docs/autodocs.mdx) for the component
* **Story**: The individual story testing a specific component state
## Naming stories
When creating your stories, you can explicitly use the `title` parameter to define the story's position in the sidebar. It can also be used to [group](#grouping) related components together in an expandable interface to help with Storybook organization providing a more intuitive experience for your users. For example:
{/* prettier-ignore-start */}
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Yields this:
## Grouping
It is also possible to group related components in an expandable interface to help with Storybook organization. To do so, use the `/` as a separator:
{/* prettier-ignore-start */}
{/* prettier-ignore-end */}
{/* prettier-ignore-start */}
{/* prettier-ignore-end */}
Yields this:
## Roots
By default, the top-level grouping will be displayed as “root” in the Storybook UI (i.e., the uppercased, non-expandable items). If you need, you can [configure Storybook](../configure/user-interface/sidebar-and-urls.mdx#roots) and disable this behavior. Useful if you need to provide a streamlined experience for your users; nevertheless, if you have a large Storybook composed of multiple component stories, we recommend naming your components according to the file hierarchy.
## Single-story hoisting
Single-story components (i.e., component stories without **siblings**) whose **display name** exactly matches the component's name (last part of `title`) are automatically hoisted up to replace their parent component in the UI. For example:
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Because story exports are automatically "start cased" (`myStory` becomes `"My Story"`), your component name should match that. Alternatively, you can override the story name using `myStory.storyName = '...'` to match the component name.
## Sorting stories
Out of the box, Storybook sorts stories based on the order in which they are imported. However, you can customize this pattern to suit your needs and provide a more intuitive experience by adding `storySort` to the `options` parameter in your `preview.js` file.
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Asides from the unique story identifier, you can also use the `title`, `name`, and import path to sort your stories using the `storySort` function.
The `storySort` can also accept a configuration object.
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| Field | Type | Description | Required | Default Value | Example |
| ---------------- | ------- | -------------------------------------------------------- | -------- | ----------------------- | ------------------------- |
| **method** | String | Tells Storybook in which order the stories are displayed | No | Storybook configuration | `'alphabetical'` |
| **order** | Array | The stories to be shown, ordered by supplied name | No | Empty Array `[]` | `['Intro', 'Components']` |
| **includeNames** | Boolean | Include story name in sort calculation | No | `false` | `true` |
| **locales** | String | The locale required to be displayed | No | System locale | `en-US` |
To sort your stories alphabetically, set `method` to `'alphabetical'` and optionally set the `locales` string. To sort your stories using a custom list, use the `order` array; stories that don't match an item in the `order` list will appear after the items in the list.
The `order` array can accept a nested array to sort 2nd-level story kinds. For example:
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Which would result in this story ordering:
1. `Intro` and then `Intro/*` stories
2. `Pages` story
3. `Pages/Home` and `Pages/Home/*` stories
4. `Pages/Login` and `Pages/Login/*` stories
5. `Pages/Admin` and `Pages/Admin/*` stories
6. `Pages/*` stories
7. `Components` and `Components/*` stories
8. All other stories
If you want specific categories to sort to the end of the list, you can insert a `*` into your `order` array to indicate where "all other stories" should go:
{/* prettier-ignore-start */}
{/* prettier-ignore-end */}
In this example, the `WIP` category would be displayed at the end of the list.
Note that the `order` option is independent of the `method` option; stories are sorted first by the `order` array and then by either the `method: 'alphabetical'` or the default `configure()` import order.