mattmccray / jdown

Transform a directory of markdown files to JSON

If you're creating content in markdown or use a CMS like NetlifyCMS which outputs markdown files jdown can transform the content into JSON containing HTML at build time ready to be consumed within templates.

Install

$ npm install jdown --save-dev

Basic Usage

const jdown = require('jdown');
jdown('path/to/content').then(content => console.log(content));

Call jdown with the path to your markdown content (relative to the project root) and it will convert your content to JSON.

Structuring Content

The structure of the JSON that jdown outputs depends on how files within the content folder are structured.

Top Level Files

Will be turned into a top level object.

Folders

Files within folders will be turned into objects and grouped under a top level object that has the same name as the parent folder (don't go more than one level deep).

Collections

The collections folder should only contain sub folders, each sub folder will be turned into an array of objects. There will be an object for each file in the sub folder.

File Contents

YAML frontmatter can be included at the top of any files throughout and it will be added to the generated JSON as individual properties.

---
title: Example frontmatter
---

Example Markdown Content

API

jdown([path], [options])

path

Type: string
Required

Path to a folder containing markdown files with a folder structure that matches the guidelines above. The path should be relative to the project root so if your content was in /Users/username/project/src/content, you would use jdown('src/content').

options

Type: object

markdown

Type: object

Options to pass to marked, jdown supports all the available marked options which can be used to control how the markdown is parsed.

assets

Type: object

Asset parsing options. Using jdown to parse assets is completely optional, but comes with a few benefits including:

• Ability to organise assets alongside markdown content
• Auto minification of image files using imagemin
• Cache busting, using the last modified time (mtime) of the asset to change its file name and avoid the old version of the asset being served

All static assets must be placed within /assets folders. Assets folders can be placed in the top level content directory and/or it's sub directories. Within the markdown content assets can then be referenced using ![](./assets/my-asset.png) where my-asset.png is an asset placed within an /assets folder.

The assets options object can contain the following properties:

Property	Type	Default	Description
output	string	./public	Directory jdown will output processed assets to
path	string	/	Publically accessible path jdown will prepend to output file names
png	object	undefined	Options to pass into imagemin-pngquant
jpg	object	undefined	Options to pass into imagemin-jpegtran
svg	object	undefined	Options to pass into imagemin-svgo
gif	object	undefined	Options to pass into imagemin-svgo

parseMd

Type: boolean
Default: true

Set this to false to disable markdown parsing and just recieve structured JSON containing markdown instead of HTML.

fileInfo

Type: boolean
Default: false

Set this to true to include file info objects in the output JSON which contain the files path, name, created at date and modified at date.

Examples

The example directory of this repository contains use of jdown including asset parsing and custom marked render options.

Contributing

Any pull requests are welcome and will be reviewed.

License

MIT