node-multidoc

This is a port of a PHP library I wrote years ago for parsing what I call 'multidocs', a simple plain text document format designed for writing blog posts. A multidoc consists of a YAML preamble plus a sequence of typed content blocks, each of which may have an argument list in the form of key/value pairs. It looks like this:

title: My First Post
publish_date: 2013-10-29T21:30

--- markdown

# First Post

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod
tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam,
quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo
consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse
cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non
proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

--- image_gallery caption:"holiday photos!" rows:5 columns:5

1.jpg
2.jpg
3.jpg
4.jpg

--- code language:javascript

for (var k in foo) {
    console.log(k + " = " + foo[k]);
}

--- markdown

## Here's some more text content

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod
tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam,
quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo
consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse
cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non
proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

This library will parse the above document into the following Javascript structure:

{ blocks: 
   [ { type: 'markdown',
       args: {},
       content: '\n# First Post\n\nLorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod\ntempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam,\nquis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo\nconsequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse\ncillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non\nproident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.\n\n' },
     { type: 'image_gallery',
       args: { caption: 'holiday photos!', rows: '5', columns: '5' },
       content: '\n1.jpg\n2.jpg\n3.jpg\n4.jpg\n\n' },
     { type: 'code',
       args: { language: 'javascript' },
       content: '\nfor (var k in foo) {\n    console.log(k + " = " + foo[k]);\n}\n\n' },
     { type: 'markdown',
       args: {},
       content: '\n## Here\'s some more text content\n\nLorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod\ntempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam,\nquis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo\nconsequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse\ncillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non\nproident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.\n' } ],
  title: 'My First Post',
  publish_date: Tue Oct 29 2013 21:30:00 GMT+0000 (GMT) }

Notes

• "bool-ish" values (true, false, yes, no, on, off) in block argument lists will be converted to boolean values
• any values (in YAML or argument lists) looking roughly like ISO-8601 dates will be converted into Date instances

Usage

Get it:

npm install multidoc

Use it:

var fs = require('fs');
var multidoc = require('multidoc');

var parsed = multidoc(fs.readFileSync('./test/test.mdoc'));