markdown-folder-to-html-output

v2.1.2

Published

2 years ago

Convert a folder with files and markdown documents to an HTML site

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ronnysherer

markdown md html static site folder cli simple

markdown-folder-to-html

This is a clone of https://github.com/joakin/markdown-folder-to-html My clone adds the ability to set output folder. This let you create a git-book where the project is located in one place and the output html files elsewhere (say: your public_html folder).

Simplest zero-config way to generate html docs from markdown files.

Copies <input folder> to <output folder> and compiles markdown files to html using docs/template.html.

Original project 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

Original instructions:

Install npm install -D markdown-folder-to-html
Add docs to npm scripts {"scripts": {"docs": "markdown-folder-to-html"}}
🎉 npm run docs and open _docs/index.html

Extension instructions to execute on current project (.) to output folder (../public_html):

Install npm install -P markdown-folder-to-html
Add docs to npm scripts {"scripts": {"docs": "markdown-folder-to-html . ../public_html"}}
🎉 npm run docs
Browse to your html folder

Globally

Install npm install -g markdown-folder-to-html
🎉 markdown-folder-to-html and open _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
# Input files from documentation
# Outputs site to _documentation

Or:

markdown-folder-to-html documentation html
# Input files from documentation
# Outputs site to html

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:

<!doctype html>
<html>
<body>
<nav>
	<!--NAV-->
</nav>
<article>
	<!--CONTENT-->
</article>
</body>
</html>

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:

{
  "paths": [
    {
      "type": "file",
      "value": "index.md"
    },
    {
      "type": "file",
      "value": "1-banana.md"
    },
    {
      "type": "dir",
      "name": "a-folder",
      "children": [
        {
          "type": "file",
          "value": "a-folder/with-a-post.md"
        }
      ]
    }
    //...
  ],
  "contents": [
    {
      "path": "index.md",
      "url": "index.html",
      "content": "# markdown-folder-to-html\n\nSimplest zero-config ...",
      "html": "<h1>markdown-folder-to-html</h1>\n<p>Simplest zero-config ...",
      "id": 0
    },
    {
      "path": "1-banana.md",
      "url": "1-banana.html",
      "content": "**Banana**\n\nYou can have [nested folders](./n...",
      "html": "<p><strong>Banana</strong></p>\n<p>You can have <a h...",
      "id": 1
    }
    //...
  ]
}

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

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