Markdown Magic

✨ Add a little magic to your markdown ✨

About

Markdown magic uses comment blocks in markdown files to automatically sync or transform its contents.

• Automatically keep markdown files up to date from local or remote code sources
• Transform markdown content with custom transform functions
• Render markdown with any template engine
• Automatically generate a table of contents
• ... etc

The comments markdown magic uses are hidden in markdown and when viewed as HTML.

This README.md is generated with markdown-magic view the raw file to see how.

Video demo • Example Repo

Table of Contents

Click to expand

• About
• Install
• Usage
  • API
  • Configuration Options
• CLI Usage
• Transforms
  • CODE
  • REMOTE
  • TOC
• Running Async transforms
• 🔌 Third Party Plugins
• Adding Custom Transforms
• Plugin Example
• Other usage examples
• Custom Transform Demo
• Prior Art
• License

Install

npm install markdown-magic --save-dev

Usage

import path from 'path'
import markdownMagic from 'markdown-magic'

const markdownPath = path.join(__dirname, 'README.md')
markdownMagic(markdownPath)

API

markdownMagic(filePath, config, callback)

• filePaths - String or Array - Path or glob pattern. Uses globby patterns
• config - See configuration options below
• callback - callback to run after markdown updates

Configuration Options

• transforms - object - (optional) Custom commands to transform block contents, see transforms & custom transforms sections below.

• outputDir - string - (optional) Change output path of new content. Default behavior is replacing the original file

• matchWord - string - (optional) Comment pattern to look for & replace inner contents. Default AUTO-GENERATED-CONTENT

• DEBUG - Boolean - (optional) set debug flag to true to inspect the process

CLI Usage

You can use markdown-magic as a CLI command. Run markdown --help to see all available CLI options

markdown --help
# or
md-magic

This is useful for adding the package quickly to your package.json npm scripts

CLI usage example with options

md-magic --path '**/*.md' --config ./config.file.js

In NPM scripts, npm run docs would run the markdown magic and parse all the .md files in the directory.

"scripts": {
  "docs": "md-magic --path '**/*.md' --ignore 'node_modules'"
},

If you have a markdown.config.js file where markdown-magic is invoked, it will automatically use that as the configuration unless otherwise specified by --config flag.

/* CLI markdown.config.js file example */
module.exports = {
  transforms: {
    /* Match <!-- AUTO-GENERATED-CONTENT:START (LOLZ) --> */
    LOLZ(content, options) {
      return `This section was generated by the cli config markdown.config.js file`
    }
  },
  callback: function () {
    console.log('done')
  }
}

Transforms

Markdown Magic comes with a couple of built in transforms for you to use or you can extend it with your own transforms. See 'Custom Transforms' below.

CODE

Get code from file or URL and put in markdown

Options:

• src: The relative path to the code to pull in, or the URL where the raw code lives
• syntax (optional): Syntax will be inferred by fileType if not specified
• header (optional): Will add header comment to code snippet. Useful for pointing to relative source directory or adding live doc links
• lines (optional): a range with lines of code which will then be replaced with code from the file. The line range should be defined as: "lines=startLine-EndLine" (for example: "lines=22-44"). Please see the example below

Example:

<!-- AUTO-GENERATED-CONTENT:START (CODE:src=./relative/path/to/code.js) -->
This content will be dynamically replaced with code from the file
<!-- AUTO-GENERATED-CONTENT:END -->

<!-- AUTO-GENERATED-CONTENT:START (CODE:src=./relative/path/to/code.js&lines=22-44) -->
This content will be dynamically replaced with code from the file lines 22 through 44
<!-- AUTO-GENERATED-CONTENT:END -->

Default MATCHWORD is AUTO-GENERATED-CONTENT

---

REMOTE

Get any remote Data and put in markdown

Options:

• url: The URL of the remote content to pull in

Example:

<!-- AUTO-GENERATED-CONTENT:START (REMOTE:url=http://url-to-raw-md-file.md) -->
This content will be dynamically replace from the remote url
<!-- AUTO-GENERATED-CONTENT:END -->

Default MATCHWORD is AUTO-GENERATED-CONTENT

---

TOC

Generate table of contents from markdown file

Options:

• firsth1 - boolean - (optional): Show first h1 of doc in table of contents. Default false
• collapse - boolean - (optional): Collapse the table of contents in a detail accordian. Default false
• collapseText - string - (optional): Text the toc accordian summary
• excludeText - string - (optional): Text to exclude in the table of contents. Default Table of Contents

Example:

<!-- AUTO-GENERATED-CONTENT:START (TOC) -->
toc will be generated here
<!-- AUTO-GENERATED-CONTENT:END -->

Default MATCHWORD is AUTO-GENERATED-CONTENT

---

Running Async transforms

Markdown magic was designed to work synchronously. Mainly for simplicity & because it's not a serverside app and speed is not really an issue.

You can use async transforms too though! To use async transforms, you will need to force them into a sync mode. Example

Forcing async functions to run sync in node.js

Version 2.0 of markdown magic will likely be async first see issue

🔌 Third Party Plugins

• wordcount - Add wordcount to markdown files
• github-contributors - List out the contributors of a given repository
• directory-tree - Add directory tree to markdown files
• install-command - Add install command to markdown files with peerDependencies included
• subpackage-list - Add list of all subpackages (great for projects that use Lerna)
• version-badge - Add a badge with the latest version of the project
• template - Add Lodash template support
• dependency-table - Add a table of dependencies with links to their repositories, version information, and a short description
• package-scripts - Add a table of package.json scripts with descriptions
• prettier - Format code blocks with prettier
• engines - Print engines list from package.json
• jsdoc - Adds jsdoc comment support
• build-badge - Update branch badges to auto-magically point to current branches.
• package-json - Add the package.json properties to markdown files
• local-image
• figlet - Add FIGfont text to markdown files
• local-image - plugin to add local images to markdown

Adding Custom Transforms

Markdown Magic is extendable via plugins.

Plugins allow developers to add new transforms to the config.transforms object. This allows for things like using different rendering engines, custom formatting, or any other logic you might want.

Plugins run in order of registration.

The below code is used to generate this markdown file via the plugin system.

const fs = require('fs')
const path = require('path')
const execSync = require('child_process').execSync
const markdownMagic = require('../index') // 'markdown-magic'

const config = {
  matchWord: 'MD-MAGIC-EXAMPLE', // default matchWord is AUTO-GENERATED-CONTENT
  transforms: {
    /* Match <!-- AUTO-GENERATED-CONTENT:START (customTransform:optionOne=hi&optionOne=DUDE) --> */
    customTransform(content, options) {
      console.log('original content in comment block', content)
      console.log('options defined on transform', options)
      // options = { optionOne: hi, optionOne: DUDE}
      return `This will replace all the contents of inside the comment ${options.optionOne}`
    },
    /* Match <!-- AUTO-GENERATED-CONTENT:START (RENDERDOCS:path=../file.js) --> */
    RENDERDOCS(content, options) {
      const fileContents = fs.readFileSync(options.path, 'utf8')
      const docBlocs = require('dox').parseComments(fileContents, { raw: true, skipSingleStar: true })
      let updatedContent = ''
      docBlocs.forEach((data) => {
        updatedContent += `${data.description.full}\n\n`
      })
      return updatedContent.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g, '')
    },
    /* Match <!-- AUTO-GENERATED-CONTENT:START (pluginExample) --> */
    pluginExample: require('./plugin-example')({ addNewLine: true }),
    /* Plugins from npm */
    // count: require('markdown-magic-wordcount'),
    // github: require('markdown-magic-github-contributors')
  }
}

/* This example callback automatically updates Readme.md and commits the changes */
const callback = function autoGitCommit(err, output) {
  // output is array of file information
  output.forEach(function(data) {
    const mdPath = data.outputFilePath
    if(!mdPath) return false
    const gitAdd = execSync(`git add ${mdPath}`, {}, (error) => {
      if (error) console.warn(error)
      const msg = `${mdPath} automatically updated by markdown-magic`
      const gitCommitCommand = `git commit -m '${msg}' --no-verify`
      execSync(gitCommitCommand, {}, (err) => {
        if (err) console.warn(err)
        console.log('git commit automatically ran. Push up your changes!')
      })
    })
  })
}

const markdownPath = path.join(__dirname, '..', 'README.md')
markdownMagic(markdownPath, config, callback)

Plugin Example

Plugins must return a transform function with the following signature.

return function myCustomTransform (content, options)

/* Custom Transform Plugin example */
const merge = require('deepmerge')
module.exports = function customPlugin(pluginOptions) {
  // set plugin defaults
  const defaultOptions = {
    addNewLine: false
  }
  const userOptions = pluginOptions || {}
  const pluginConfig = merge(defaultOptions, userOptions)
  // return the transform function
  return function myCustomTransform (content, options) {
    const newLine = (pluginConfig.addNewLine) ? '\n' : ''
    const updatedContent = content + newLine
    return updatedContent
  }
}

View the raw file file and run npm run docs to see this plugin run

This content is altered by the pluginExample plugin registered in examples/generate-readme.js

Other usage examples

• Serverless Plugin Repo this example takes a json file and converts it into a github flavored markdown table
• MochaJS
• tc39/agendas - code
• moleculerjs/moleculer-addons
• good-first-issue
• navikt/nav-frontend-moduler
• country-flags-svg
• react-typesetting
• and many more!

Custom Transform Demo

View the raw source of this README.md file to see the comment block and see how the customTransform function in examples/generate-readme.js works

This will replace all the contents of inside the comment DUDE

Prior Art

This was inspired by Kent C Dodds and jfmengels's all contributors cli project.

This section was generated by the cli config markdown.config.js file

License

MIT © DavidWells

Usage examples

• Project using markdown-magic
• Examples in md