marked
A full-featured markdown parser and compiler, written in JavaScript. Built for speed.
Install
npm install marked --save
Usage
Minimal usage:
var marked = require('marked');
console.log(marked('I am using __markdown__.'));
// Outputs: <p>I am using <strong>markdown</strong>.</p>
Example setting options with default values:
var marked = require('marked');
marked.setOptions({
renderer: new marked.Renderer(),
gfm: true,
tables: true,
breaks: false,
pedantic: false,
sanitize: true,
smartLists: true,
smartypants: false
});
console.log(marked('I am using __markdown__.'));
marked(markdownString [,options] [,callback])
markdownString
Type: string
String of markdown source to be compiled.
options
Type: object
Hash of options. Can also be set using the marked.setOptions
method as seen
above.
callback
Type: function
Function called when the markdownString
has been fully parsed when using
async highlighting. If the options
argument is omitted, this can be used as
the second argument.
Options
highlight
Type: function
A function to highlight code blocks. The first example below uses async highlighting with node-pygmentize-bundled, and the second is a synchronous example using highlight.js:
var marked = require('marked');
var markdownString = '```js\n console.log("hello"); \n```';
// Async highlighting with pygmentize-bundled
marked.setOptions({
highlight: function (code, lang, callback) {
require('pygmentize-bundled')({ lang: lang, format: 'html' }, code, function (err, result) {
callback(err, result.toString());
});
}
});
// Using async version of marked
marked(markdownString, function (err, content) {
if (err) throw err;
console.log(content);
});
// Synchronous highlighting with highlight.js
marked.setOptions({
highlight: function (code) {
return require('highlight.js').highlightAuto(code).value;
}
});
console.log(marked(markdownString));
highlight arguments
code
Type: string
The section of code to pass to the highlighter.
lang
Type: string
The programming language specified in the code block.
callback
Type: function
The callback function to call when using an async highlighter.
renderer
Type: object
Default: new Renderer()
An object containing functions to render tokens to HTML.
Overriding renderer methods
The renderer option allows you to render tokens in a custom manor. Here is an example of overriding the default heading token rendering by adding an embedded anchor tag like on GitHub:
var marked = require('marked');
var renderer = new marked.Renderer();
renderer.heading = function (text, level) {
var escapedText = text.toLowerCase().replace(/[^\w]+/g, '-');
return '<h' + level + '><a name="' +
escapedText +
'" class="anchor" href="#' +
escapedText +
'"><span class="header-link"></span></a>' +
text + '</h' + level + '>';
},
console.log(marked('# heading+', { renderer: renderer }));
This code will output the following HTML:
<h1>
<a name="heading-" class="anchor" href="#heading-">
<span class="header-link"></span>
</a>
heading+
</h1>
Block level renderer methods
- code(string code, string language)
- blockquote(string quote)
- html(string html)
- heading(string text, number level)
- hr()
- list(string body, boolean ordered)
- listitem(string text)
- paragraph(string text)
- table(string header, string body)
- tablerow(string content)
- tablecell(string content, object flags)
flags
has the following properties:
{
header: true || false,
align: 'center' || 'left' || 'right'
}
Inline level renderer methods
- strong(string text)
- em(string text)
- codespan(string code)
- br()
- del(string text)
- link(string href, string title, string text)
- image(string href, string title, string text)
gfm
Type: boolean
Default: true
Enable GitHub flavored markdown.
tables
Type: boolean
Default: true
Enable GFM tables.
This option requires the gfm
option to be true.
breaks
Type: boolean
Default: false
Enable GFM line breaks.
This option requires the gfm
option to be true.
pedantic
Type: boolean
Default: false
Conform to obscure parts of markdown.pl
as much as possible. Don't fix any of
the original markdown bugs or poor behavior.
sanitize
Type: boolean
Default: false
Sanitize the output. Ignore any HTML that has been input.
smartLists
Type: boolean
Default: true
Use smarter list behavior than the original markdown. May eventually be
default with the old behavior moved into pedantic
.
smartypants
Type: boolean
Default: false
Use "smart" typograhic punctuation for things like quotes and dashes.
Access to lexer and parser
You also have direct access to the lexer and parser if you so desire.
var tokens = marked.lexer(text, options);
console.log(marked.parser(tokens));
var lexer = new marked.Lexer(options);
var tokens = lexer.lex(text);
console.log(tokens);
console.log(lexer.rules);
CLI
$ marked -o hello.html
hello world
^D
$ cat hello.html
<p>hello world</p>
Philosophy behind marked
The point of marked was to create a markdown compiler where it was possible to frequently parse huge chunks of markdown without having to worry about caching the compiled output somehow...or blocking for an unnecesarily long time.
marked is very concise and still implements all markdown features. It is also now fully compatible with the client-side.
marked more or less passes the official markdown test suite in its entirety. This is important because a surprising number of markdown compilers cannot pass more than a few tests. It was very difficult to get marked as compliant as it is. It could have cut corners in several areas for the sake of performance, but did not in order to be exactly what you expect in terms of a markdown rendering. In fact, this is why marked could be considered at a disadvantage in the benchmarks above.
Along with implementing every markdown feature, marked also implements GFM features.
Benchmarks
node v0.8.x
$ node test --bench
marked completed in 3411ms.
marked (gfm) completed in 3727ms.
marked (pedantic) completed in 3201ms.
robotskirt completed in 808ms.
showdown (reuse converter) completed in 11954ms.
showdown (new converter) completed in 17774ms.
markdown-js completed in 17191ms.
Marked is now faster than Discount, which is written in C.
For those feeling skeptical: These benchmarks run the entire markdown test suite 1000 times. The test suite tests every feature. It doesn't cater to specific aspects.
Pro level
You also have direct access to the lexer and parser if you so desire.
var tokens = marked.lexer(text, options);
console.log(marked.parser(tokens));
var lexer = new marked.Lexer(options);
var tokens = lexer.lex(text);
console.log(tokens);
console.log(lexer.rules);
$ node
> require('marked').lexer('> i am using marked.')
[ { type: 'blockquote_start' },
{ type: 'paragraph',
text: 'i am using marked.' },
{ type: 'blockquote_end' },
links: {} ]
Running Tests & Contributing
If you want to submit a pull request, make sure your changes pass the test suite. If you're adding a new feature, be sure to add your own test.
The marked test suite is set up slightly strangely: test/new
is for all tests
that are not part of the original markdown.pl test suite (this is where your
test should go if you make one). test/original
is only for the original
markdown.pl tests. test/tests
houses both types of tests after they have been
combined and moved/generated by running node test --fix
or marked --test --fix
.
In other words, if you have a test to add, add it to test/new/
and then
regenerate the tests with node test --fix
. Commit the result. If your test
uses a certain feature, for example, maybe it assumes GFM is not enabled, you
can add .nogfm
to the filename. So, my-test.text
becomes
my-test.nogfm.text
. You can do this with any marked option. Say you want
line breaks and smartypants enabled, your filename should be:
my-test.breaks.smartypants.text
.
To run the tests:
cd marked/
node test
Contribution and License Agreement
If you contribute code to this project, you are implicitly allowing your code
to be distributed under the MIT license. You are also implicitly verifying that
all code is your original work. </legalese>
License
Copyright (c) 2011-2013, Christopher Jeffrey. (MIT License)
See LICENSE for more info.