react-mde

A simple yet powerful and extensible Markdown Editor editor for React, inspired by GitHub.

Demo

Checkout the demo.

Installing

npm install --save react-mde

Dependencies

React-mde currently depends on:

Font Awesome - For the icons (this dependency will be removed soon)
Showdown - For rendering the markdown preview

So...

npm install --save showdown font-awesome

Using

React-mde is a completely controlled component. Example of usage:

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import { ReactMde, ReactMdeCommands } from 'react-mde';

class App extends Component {

    state = {
        mdeValue: {text: "", selection: null}
    }

    handleValueChange(value) {
        this.setState({mdeValue: value});
    }

    render() {
        // get the default commands, you can pick individual commands if you like, or add your own
        let commands = ReactMdeCommands.getDefaultCommands()
        return (
            <div className="container">
                <ReactMde
                    textareaId="ta1"
                    textareaName="ta1"
                    value={this.state.mdeValue}
                    onChange={this.handleValueChange.bind(this)}
                    commands={commands} />
            </div>
        );
    }
}

export default App;

Props:

textareaId: The id of the textarea.
textareaName: The name of the textarea.
value: The current value. This property should look like {text: "", selection: [2, 3]} where text is the text and selection is an array with the beggining and the end of the selection. Passing null to selection is perfectly fine.
onChange: Function that should handle the value. The value passed as a parameter to the onChange function is of the same type as the value prop above.
commands: An array or array of command objects. The first array represents groups, the second array represents commands inside that group. Take a look of how to create a custom command below.

Styling

The following tyles from React-mde should be added: (Both .scss and .css files are available. No need to use sass-loader if you don't want)

react-mde/lib/styles/react-mde.scss: The styling of the component itself.
react-mde/lib/styles/react-mde-command-styles.scss: This is the styling for the built-in commands. If these commands are not going to be used. This doesn't have to be included.
react-mde/lib/styles/markdown-default-theme.scss: The markdown theme to be used inside the preview box.

Example in importing styles in your [entry_point].js:

import 'normalize.css/normalize.css';
import 'font-awesome/css/font-awesome.css';
import 'react-mde/lib/styles/react-mde.scss';
import 'react-mde/lib/styles/react-mde-command-styles.scss';
import 'react-mde/lib/styles/markdown-default-theme.scss';
import './styles/demo.scss';

Couldn't make this work on your project?

This is the minimum setup app to work with react-mde: https://github.com/andrerpena/react-mde-test-app

Commands

React-mde allows you to use the build-in commands, implement your own commands, or both.

There are two types of commands, the button commands (default if you don't say anything), and the dropdown commands. button commands appear as button and execute a single action when clicked. dropdown commands have subCommands and will display a dropdown when you click them.

Anatomy of a button command

{
    type: 'button', // this is optional as this is the default 
    icon: 'bold',
    tooltip: 'Add bold text',
    execute: function (text, selection) {
        if (text && text.length && selection[0] == selection[1]) {
            // the user is pointing to a word
            selection = getSurroundingWord(text, selection[0]).position;
        }
        // the user is selecting a word section
        var {newText, insertionLength} = insertText(text, '**', selection[0]);
        newText = insertText(newText, '**', selection[1] + insertionLength).newText;
        return {
            text: newText,
            selection: [selection[0] + insertionLength, selection[1] + insertionLength]
        }
    }
}

props:

type: The type of the command.
icon: If this is a text, it will print a font-awesome  element with the classes fa fa-${icon}. Passing bold will print . If the passing value is a React element, it will print the react element.
tooltip: If any, it will print a tooltip with the passed text.
execute: The function that will actually execute the command. This function accepts 2 parameters: text, which is the whole textarea text before your command, and selection, a 2 items array containing the beggining and end of the current selection. Your function should return the current text (after your command) and the current selection (after your command).

Anatomy of a dropdown command

{
	type: 'dropdown',
	icon: 'header',
	subCommands: [
		{
			content: <p className="header-1">Header</p>,
			execute: function (text, selection) {
				return makeHeader(text, selection, '# ');
			}
		},
		{
			content: <p className="header-2">Header</p>,
			execute: function (text, selection) {
				return makeHeader(text, selection, '## ');
			}
		},
		{
			content: <p className="header-3">Header</p>,
			execute: function (text, selection) {
				return makeHeader(text, selection, '### ');
			}
		}
	]
}

props:

type: The type of the command.
icon: If this is a text, it will print a font-awesome  element with the classes fa fa-${icon}. Passing bold will print . If the passing value is a React element, it will print the react element.
subCommands: A list of commands that will dropdown when you click the button.

subCommands is an array of objects with the following props:

content: A React component that will be displayed within the li.
execute: The function that will actually execute the command. This function accepts 2 parameters: text, which is the whole textarea text before your command, and selection, a 2 items array containing the beggining and end of the current selection. Your function should return the current text (after your command) and the current selection (after your command).

Roadmap

Add support for undoing a command by clicking it twice
Add support for @mentions and #hashtags with dropdown and autocomplete.
Add support for optionally server-rendering the markdown preview (like GitHub does)

Licence

React-mde is MIT licensed

About the author

Made with ❤️ by André Pena. Check out my website: http://andrerpena.me

Jascha-Sundaresan/react-mde