pandoc-slave

Special module to run Pandoc application with different parameters in Qt projects.This project was designed as a part of Pllug Presentetion System 2 project. Hovewer you can use it in any other projects.

Dependencies

In order to use this project you must have installed pandoc in system. Read pandoc official documentation how do this. After installind copy pandoc.exe file to pandoc folder. This instance use for runing project.

Usage as submodule

Important step for use project, understanding how working with submoduls in git.

Getting started

First of all you need build parameters line using ParamsBuilser class. This class provide special functionality to combining various parameters and build one complexity parameters string. Let's build parameters line for convert markdown input file input.md into output HTML file output.html:

using namespace PandocSlave;
...
ParamsBuilder builder;

builder.addParam(ParamsBuilder::empty, "path/to/input.md");
builder.addParam(ParamsBuilder::from, ParamsBuilder::Markdown);
builder.addParam(ParamsBuilder::to, ParamsBuilder::HTML);
builder.addParam(ParamsBuider::output, "path/to/output.html");

qDebug() << builder.toString();

This code produce and print following parameters string (see here for more information about pandoc parameters):

path/to/input.md -f markdown -t html -o path/to/output.html

Next step, use builder instance in PandocRunner class. For example:

using namespace PandocSlave;
...
QString pandocExePath = "path/to/pandoc.exe";

PandocRunner runner(pandocExePath, builder.params());
runner.run();

Supported formats

Format	Describe
ParamsBuilder::Markdown	Simple markdown
ParamsBuilder::Markdown_Github	Github markdown
ParamsBuilder::HTML	HTML format
ParamsBuilder::Json	Json format

Supported pandoc parameters

Parameter	Describe
ParamsBuilder::empty	Use for presents parameter without key.
ParamsBuilder::from	Presentation of -f pandoc parameter.
ParamsBuilder::to	Presentation of -t pandoc parameter.
ParamsBuilder::output	Presentation of -o pandoc parameter.
ParamsBuilder::standalone	Presentation of -s pandoc parameter.
ParamsBuilder::template_file	Presentation of --template pandoc parameter.
ParamsBuilder::metadata	Presentation of --metadata pandoc parameter.

Pandoc template engine

Imagine we have following input.md file with content:

# Header

We want convert this file into html format using pandoc template engine. First of all we must have some template, for example, template.html:

<root>
$body$
</root>

If we run following command:

pandoc input.md -f markdown -t html --template template.html

we get output content:

<root>
<h1 id="header">Header</h1>
</root>

$body$ template variable is predefined pandoc variable. But, we can define own variables. Value for this variables we can pass throught command line using parameter --metadata. Let's construct ParamsBuilder instance for using template:

using namespace PandocSlave;

ParamsBuilder builder;
builder.addParam(ParamsBuilder::empty, "path/to/input.md");
builder.addParam(ParamsBuilder::from, ParamsBuilders::Markdown);
builder.addParam(ParamsBuilder::to, ParamsBuilder::HTML);
builder.addParam(ParamsBuilder::template_file, "path/to/template.html");
builder.addParam(ParamsBuilder::metadata, "author:\"Author Name\"");

In example above input.md file:

# Header

and template.html file:

<root author="$author$">
$body$
</root>

Happy codding.