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

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
# 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:

<!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.

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

dmgig / markdown-folder-to-html