HTML 2 Markdown

A simple NodeJS library to convert HTML to Markdown.

How it works

The given HTML string is transformed into a virtual DOM using cheerio and afterwards minified using html-minifier. The resulting DOM-Nodes are then run though (extendable) rules and deconstructed into Markdown text.

Each DOM-Node replaces itself with the transformed output text. The end result is a <body> with only text nodes inside. The resulting innerHTML() of the body is then sanitized (removing more then 2 linkbreaks in a row etc.) and its content given back.

Why yet another lib?

I was trying serveral other libs before and none was a perfect fit. Often they didn't escape correctly, so that a <div># Hallo Welt</div> would result in # Hello World as Markdown, which is not correct. Also, some libs did not work in newer NodeJS versions.

Feature support

Not everything has a coverage yet, but most things work quite well:

[x] Line Breaks
[x] Images
[x] Anchors
[x] Lists (ordered, unordered)
[x] Strong text
[x] Italic text
[x] Headings
[x] Horizontal line
[x] Paragraphs
[x] Inline Code
[x] Code Blocks
[x] Blockquotes
[ ] Tables (Markdown Extra Feature)

Usage

const html2md = require('html2md');

let myMarkdown = html2md('<h1>Hello World</h1>');

console.log(myMarkdown); // # Hello World

Demo

Clone this repository and move into the folder.
Add your own sites to sites.json.
Run node demo.js and watch the outputed files.

feizhenhua / html2md