tessl/npm-markdown

A sensible Markdown parser for javascript

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Command Line Interface

Name: tessl/npm-markdown
Author: tessl

CLI tool for converting markdown files to HTML with dialect selection and flexible input/output handling.

Capabilities

md2html Command

Command-line utility for markdown to HTML conversion.

# Basic usage
md2html [options] [file]

# Options:
#   --dialect=DIALECT  Choose "Gruber" (default) or "Maruku"  
#   --help            Show usage information
#
# Input: File path or stdin when file is "-" or omitted
# Output: HTML written to stdout

Installation:

# Install globally to get md2html command
npm install -g markdown

# Or use locally installed version
npx md2html file.md

Basic File Conversion

Convert markdown files to HTML with automatic output.

Usage Examples:

# Convert file to HTML
md2html document.md > document.html

# Convert with output redirection
md2html README.md > README.html

# Process multiple files (shell loop)
for file in *.md; do
  md2html "$file" > "${file%.md}.html"
done

Dialect Selection

Choose between Gruber (default) and Maruku parsing dialects.

Usage Examples:

# Use default Gruber dialect
md2html document.md

# Use Maruku dialect for extended features
md2html --dialect=Maruku document.md

# Maruku supports tables, metadata, etc.
md2html --dialect=Maruku table.md > table.html

Stdin Processing

Process markdown from standard input for pipeline usage.

Usage Examples:

# Process from stdin
echo "# Hello World" | md2html

# Explicit stdin with dash
echo "**Bold text**" | md2html -

# Pipeline processing
curl -s https://example.com/doc.md | md2html --dialect=Maruku

# Process from here-document
md2html << 'EOF'
# Documentation

This is **important** information.

- Item 1
- Item 2
EOF

Help and Usage Information

Get command help and usage instructions.

# Show help
md2html --help

# Output:
# usage: md2html [--dialect=DIALECT] FILE
#
# Valid dialects are Gruber (the default) or Maruku

Error Handling

The command handles various error conditions:

# File not found
md2html nonexistent.md
# Writes error to stderr, exits with code 1

# Invalid dialect
md2html --dialect=Invalid file.md  
# No error (invalid dialect ignored, uses default)

# Permission errors
md2html /root/restricted.md
# Writes error to stderr, exits with code 1

Advanced Usage Patterns

Complex workflows combining shell features with md2html.

Batch Processing:

#!/bin/bash
# Convert all markdown files in directory tree

find . -name "*.md" -type f | while read -r file; do
  output="${file%.md}.html"
  echo "Converting: $file -> $output"
  md2html --dialect=Maruku "$file" > "$output"
done

Pipeline with Processing:

# Download, process, and format markdown
curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/user/repo/readme |
  jq -r '.content' |
  base64 -d |
  md2html --dialect=Maruku |
  tidy -q -i --show-warnings no

Conditional Dialect Selection:

#!/bin/bash
file="$1"

# Use Maruku for files with tables or metadata
if grep -q '|.*|' "$file" || grep -q '^[A-Za-z]*:' "$file"; then
  dialect="Maruku" 
else
  dialect="Gruber"
fi

echo "Using $dialect dialect for $file"
md2html --dialect="$dialect" "$file"

Template Integration:

#!/bin/bash
# Wrap markdown conversion in HTML template

header='<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><title>Document</title></head><body>'
footer='</body></html>'

echo "$header"
md2html "$1"
echo "$footer"

Implementation Details

The md2html command is implemented in bin/md2html.js and uses the core markdown library:

// Simplified implementation overview
var markdown = require("markdown").markdown;
var nopt = require("nopt");

// Parse command line options
var opts = nopt({
  "dialect": ["Gruber", "Maruku"],
  "help": Boolean
});

// Process input stream
stream.on("end", function() {
  var html = markdown.toHTML(buffer, opts.dialect);
  console.log(html);
});

The command integrates with standard Unix conventions: