mdbook-cmdrun

This is a preprocessor for the rust-lang mdbook project. This allows to run arbitrary (shell) commands and include the output of these commands within the markdown file.

Getting started

cargo install mdbook-cmdrun

You also have to activate the preprocessor, put this in your book.toml file:

[preprocessor.cmdrun]

How to

Let's say we have these two files:

Markdown file: file.md

# Title

<!-- cmdrun seq 1 10 -->

<!-- cmdrun python3 script.py -->

Python file: script.py

def main():
    print("## Generated subtitle")
    print("  This comes from the script.py file")
    print("  Since I'm in a scripting language,")
    print("  I can compute whatever I want")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

The preprocessor will call seq then python3, and will produce the resulting file:

# Title

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

## Generated subtitle
  This comes from the script.py file
  Since I'm in a scripting language,
  I can compute whatever I want

Details

When the pattern \n or  is encountered, the command $1 will be run using the shell sh like this: sh -c $1. Also the working directory is the directory where the pattern was found (not root). The command invoked must take no inputs (stdin is not used), but a list of command lines arguments and must produce output in stdout, stderr is ignored.

As of July 2023, mdbook-cmdrun runs on Windows platforms using the cmd shell!

Examples

The following is valid:

<!-- cmdrun python3 generate_table.py -->

```rust
<!-- cmdrun cat program.rs -->
```

```diff
<!-- cmdrun diff a.rs b.rs -->
```

```console
<!-- cmdrun ls -l . -->
```

## Example of inline use inside a table
````markdown
Item | Price | # In stock
---|---|---
Juicy Apples | <!-- cmdrun node price.mjs apples --> | *<!-- cmdrun node quantity.mjs apples  -->*
Bananas | *<!-- cmdrun node price.mjs bananas -->* | <!-- cmdrun node quantity.mjs bananas -->

Which gets rendered as:

Item | Price | # In stock
---|---|---
Juicy Apples | 1.99 | *7*
Bananas | *1.89* | 5234

Some more examples are implemented, and are used as regression tests. You can find them here. At the moment of writing, there are examples using:

Shell
Bash script
Batch script
Python3
Node
Rust

Contributors

I would like to thank @exsjabe for his valuable help with integrating Windows support and inline cmdrun calls.