Render documents to Markdown, Text, HTML, XML, YAML and JSON

Output renderers for commonmark.

npm i mkout --save

For the command line interface install mkdoc globally (npm i -g mkdoc).

• Install
• Usage
• Example
• Renderer Implementation
  • Markdown
  • Text
  • JSON
  • YAML
• Help
  • mkman
  • mktext
  • mkhtml
• API
  • out
    • Options
  • JsonRenderer
    • Options
  • Links
  • .add
  • .list
  • .reset
  • ManRenderer
    • Options
  • MarkdownRenderer
  • normalize
  • TextRenderer
    • Options
  • YamlRenderer
    • Options
• License

Create the stream and write a commonmark document:

var out = require('mkcat')
  , ast = require('mkast');
ast.src('# Heading')
  .pipe(out())
  .pipe(process.stdout);

Print as markdown:

mkcat README.md | mkout

Print as HTML:

mkcat README.md | mkout --html

Print as XML:

mkcat README.md | mkout --xml

Print as plain text:

mkcat README.md | mkout --text

YAML is particularly useful to get a compact view of the tree:

mkcat README.md | mkout -y

For more detailed YAML use:

mkcat README.md | mkout -Y

Print as JSON:

mkcat README.md | mkout -j

Pass through the input newline-delimited JSON:

mkcat README.md | mkout --noop

This section briefly describes the handling of the various commonmark types, see the api docs for more detail.

The markdown renderer renders all basic markdown types as expected however it is not yet commonmark compliant which is work in progress.

The text renderer inherits from the markdown renderer so you can choose which types to preserve as markdown, by default headings and lists are preserved. Headings are preserved to maintain the document structure but you may disable them; list rendering is always performed using the underlying markdown renderer.

Block and inline HTML is normalized to text but may be preserved.

Links are converted to indexed references in the form example[1] and the appropriate references are appended to the document: [1]:http://example.com. Duplicate link destinations are resolved.

If you wanted to preserve some inline elements in addition to headings and lists you could pass the options:

{preserve:{heading: true, code: true, emph: true, strong: true}}

Soft line breaks are removed but you can preserve them. Thematic breaks (---) are rendered as a series of 80 hyphens which may be customised.

Code blocks are indented with two spaces, the info string if present is not preserved.

The JSON renderer allows serializing a node tree such that it could be passed between processes or pushed to a remote queue for further processing.

Circular references are resolved and the document has enough information to recreate a node tree with a 1:1 correlation with the original.

The YAML renderer is designed to provide a compact view of the tree which is easy to read but can also include the node properties for an extended view of the document.

Whilst it would be possible to recreate a node tree from a YAML document it is optimized for legibility over processing; use the JSON renderer for serialization requirements.

Compact output for a simple document:

---
- document: 
  - paragraph: 
    - text: 'Generated by '
    - link: 
      - text: 'mkdoc'
---

Usage: mkout [options]

  Render to various output formats.

Options
  -o, --output=[FILE]     Write output to FILE (default: stdout)
  -H, --html              Set output renderer to HTML
  -j, --json              Set output renderer to JSON
  -m, --man               Set output renderer to MAN
  -t, --text              Set output renderer to TEXT
  -x, --xml               Set output renderer to XML
  -y, --yaml              Set output renderer to YAML
  -Y, --yaml-full         Do not compact YAML output
  -n, --noop              Pass through input JSON
  -h, --help              Display help and exit
  --version               Print the version and exit

[email protected]

Usage: mkman [options]

  Render to troff man page.

Options
  -t, --title=[VAL]       Set the page title (default: UNTITLED)
  -s, --section=[NUM]     Set the section number (default: 1)
  -i, --inline=[VAL]      Inline code rendering style (default: strong)
  -l, --locale=[VAL]      Locale for automatic date generation (default: en-gb)
  -v, --preamble-version=[VAL]     
                          Version for document preamble (default: 1.0)
  -d, --date=[VAL]        Use specific date
  -h, --help              Display help and exit
  --version               Print the version and exit

[email protected]

Usage: mktext [options]

  Render to plain text.

Options
  -i, --indent=[NUM]      Code block and block quote indentation (default: 4)
  -q, --quote=[VAL]       Character used to prefix block quotes
  -e, --emph              Preserve emph as markdown
  -s, --strong            Preserve strong as markdown
  -c, --code              Preserve inline code as markdown
  -l, --link              Preserve links as markdown
  -t, --thematic-break    Preserve thematic break as markdown
  -I, --image             Preserve image as markdown
  -C, --code-block        Preserve code block as markdown
  -B, --block-quote       Preserve block quote as markdown
  -H, --heading           Preserve heading as markdown
  -S, --softbreak         Preserve softbreak as markdown
  -L, --linebreak         Preserve linebreak as markdown
  --html-inline           Preserve inline html as markdown
  --html-block            Preserve html block as markdown
  --custom-inline         Preserve custom inline as markdown
  --custom-block          Preserve custom block as markdown
  -h, --help              Display help and exit
  --version               Print the version and exit

[email protected]

Usage: mkhtml [options]

  Render to HTML page.

Options
  -h, --help              Display help and exit
  --version               Print the version and exit

[email protected]

out([opts][, cb])

Print via a renderer to an output stream.

Returns an output stream.

• opts Object processing options.
• cb Function callback function.

• type String output type.
• input Readable=process.stdin input stream.
• output Writable=process.stdout output stream.
• render Object renderer options.

new JsonRenderer([opts])

Renders an abstract syntax tree to JSON.

By default prints a compact JSON document, pass indent for indented output:

{indent: 1}

But be careful the tree can be very deep so it is not recommended you set indent to greater than two.

• opts Object processing options.

• indent Number=0 number of spaces to indent the JSON.

new Links()

Manages a list of links and their destinations in a linked list.

The links array is a list of nodes and destinations maps link destinations to their index in the array.

Links.prototype.add(node)

Add a link node to this collection of links.

Returns a boolean indicating whether the link was added.

• node Object the link node.

Links.prototype.list([newline])

Retrieves a list of link references.

Returns list of link references.

• newline String the newline character to use.

Links.prototype.reset()

Resets this instance so it does not contain any links.

new ManRenderer([opts])

Renders an abstract syntax tree to a ROFF man page.

The man page preamble is created using the standard .TH macro and uses sensible default values when the corresponding preamble options are not specified.

Adds macros for headings level 1-6 (.h1-.h6), a macro for the thematic break (.hr) and the newline macro (.nl) after the preamble.

A standard list uses the .BL, .IP and .EL macros rendering a circle as the list bullet.

Lists that use the bullet character + are treated differently; they are rendered using the .TP macro and the first softbreak in the list item paragraph causes a newline in the output. This is intended for listing options and commands in the idiomatic format:

.TP
\fB\-\-version\fR
Print version and exit

• opts Object processing options.

• autolink Boolean=true create automatic links by index.
• section String=1 man page section number.
• title String=UNTITLED title for the man page.
• preambleVersion String=1.0 version for the preamble.
• description String description for the preamble.
• locale String locale used for date formatting.
• inline String=emph|strong formatting for inline code.
• html Boolean=false force inclusion of HTML blocks.

new MarkdownRenderer([opts])

Renders an abstract syntax tree to markdown.

Eventually the aim is to make the output of this renderer fully commonmark compliant, at the moment it's output has not been completely tested for compliance.

• opts Object processing options.

normalize(text)

Strips HTML tags from a string and collapses whitespace similar to how XML text nodes are normalized.

This is designed for the TEXT and MAN output formats so we are not concerned with XSS attacks, use striptags or another library if you need to strip tags destined for HTML output.

Returns the normalized text.

• text String input text.

new TextRenderer([opts])

Renders an abstract syntax tree to a plain text view.

With the exception of the PARAGRAPH, LIST and ITEM node types all other markdown formatting is removed.

If you wish to preserve some other aspects of the markdown formatting, you can specify options such as:

{preserve:{emph: true}}

Which would preserve emphasis as markdown.

Code blocks (when not preserved) are indented by the whitespace specified with the indent option, default is four spaces.

Block quotes are indented according to indent and then prefixed with a vertical pipe (|), you can change this prefix with the quote option.

Unless autolink is disabled (or links are preserved) links are removed and appended to the end of the document such that the input:

[Commonmark](http://commonmark.org)

Is converted to:

Commonmark[1]

[1]: http://commomark.org

Soft line breaks are removed unless preserved and a single space is injected when necessary.

Thematic breaks are rendered as the hyphen (-) repeated 80 times. You may change this output with the hr option.

HTML is normalized to text unless the html_block or html_inline elements are preserved.

• opts Object processing options.

• autolink Boolean=true create automatic links by index.
• indent String amount of whitespace indentation for code blocks.
• preserve Object map of node types that should be preserved.

new YamlRenderer([opts])

Renders an abstract syntax tree to YAML.

This implementation is designed to provide an easy to read view of the tree; whilst it would certainly be possible to recreate the tree from the YAML output it has not been optimized for that use case.

By default a compact view of the tree is rendered, if you also want to inspect the node properties disable compact:

{compact: false}

• opts Object processing options.

• compact Boolean=true create compact YAML documents.

MIT

Created by mkdoc on April 18, 2016