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-devBasic 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.
📄 Files
Will be turned into an object, file objects will always contain a contents and
fileInfo property...
📂 Files within folders
Will be turned into individual objects then grouped within a parent object that has the same name as the parent folder (don't go more than one level deep).
🗄 Collections
To generate arrays of file objects a folder named "collections" can be created. The collections folder should only contain sub folders, each then each file within a sub folder will be added to an array of objects.
📝 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 ContentAPI
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
 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