markdown-folder-to-html
Simplest zero-config way to generate html docs from markdown files.
Copies docs to _docs and compiles markdown files to html using
docs/template.html.
Live example at chimeces.com/markdown-folder-to-html
Usage
Requires node.js >= 6
Given we have some docs:
mkdir -p docs- Add some docs
echo "**Banana**" > docs/banana.md - Add some docs
echo "**Apple**" > docs/index.md
In a project
- Install
npm install -D markdown-folder-to-html - Add
docsto npm scripts{"scripts": {"docs": "markdown-folder-to-html"}} - 🎉
npm run docsandopen _docs/index.html
Globally
- Install
npm install -g markdown-folder-to-html - 🎉
markdown-folder-to-htmlandopen _docs/index.html
Conventions
Input/Output folder
You can pass an argument to the cli to change the input folder (by default
docs). That will change the output folder too to _FOLDERNAME (by default
_docs).
markdown-folder-to-html documentation# Outputs site to _documentation If you want to change the output folder name, just mv it to something else.
Custom HTML
The default HTML is extremely basic, but simple and pretty, and is the one used in the docs.
This is the basic template that would work:
<!--NAV--> <!--CONTENT-->Create your own in your docs folder docs/template.html to use that one
instead. Feel free to include styles inline or CSS files (since all will be
copied to output).
Order
You may have noticed that files are sorted alphabetically. There's a little trick where if you name your folders/files with XX-folder/XX-file (XX being a number of 1+ digits) those numbers won't show up on the index of the pages, giving you the ability to organize files both in the filesystem and in the generated HTML site.
Also, the root index.md file will always show up at the beginning of the
index.
Site contents and information for custom templates
If you want to do things with a custom template HTML you need the information of the site. This will allow you to do things in the front-end UI, like adding search to the static site with lunrjs or other things like adding buttons for the next/previous article.
For this use cases, you will see a contents.json generated in your output
folder. It contains the hierarchical paths of the files, and the contents with
the original markup, the HTML, the original path and the transformed URL:
See the JSON file of our documentation site for an example.
You can then fetch this JSON file with JS from your template, and go crazy with it, processing the contents to adapt them for search, looking for the previous/next articles to link to them, etc.
If you have working examples of a template that does something interesting, please let me know and I'll list them here!
Why
After quite a lot of research, I couldn't find a simple and straightforward solution to generating html docs from a folder full of markdown files that relied on simple concepts. That is what this tool does:
- Simply copy everything over, and translate .md files to .html with a pure HTML layout (feel free to add CSS, or JS, or precompile those assets if you need to)
- .md links are rewritten to .html so that you can reference files with their real path on your markdown files and they'll work on the HTML version too.
- Provide sensible defaults and zero-configuration. JUST WORK.
- Use know abstraction, like the file system, pure HTML, etc