GitDown

A simple package for parsing (GitHub Flavored) Markdown in PHP.

WARNING

This package is a fraud. All it does is fire off your markdown to a public GitHub API that returns the parsed result.

Knowing this, if you don't store the result, or take advantage of the provided caching features, you'll end up with slow page loads, or worse, rate-limit errors from GitHub.

Markdown parsing is super annoying, and this tradeoff is well worth it to me, I hope you embrace it as well.

Installation

composer require calebporzio/gitdown

TLDR;

// Optionally set a GitHub Personal Access Token to increase rate-limit.
GitDown::setToken($token);

GitDown::parse($markdown);

// Uses Laravel's cache()->rememberForever() under the hood.
GitDown::parseAndCache($markdown);

Optionally, add the @gitdown snippet to your template's <head> section, and a .markdown-body class to a wrapper element, for GitHub markdown/code-syntax styling.

<head>
    [...]
    @gitdown
</head>
<body>
    <div class="markdown-body">
        {!! GitDown::parseAndCache($content) !!}
    </div>
</body>

Authenticating With GitHub

Without authentication, GitHub will limit your API calls to 60 calls/hour. If you use authentication tokens, you can increase this limit to 5000 calls/minute. It is highly recommended that you use a "Personal Access Token" with this package. To obtain one, click here. (You can leave the permissions blank for this token.)

First, publish the package's config file.

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="GitDown\GitDownServiceProvider"

Then, add the following entry to your .env file.

[...]
GITHUB_TOKEN=your-token-here

Usage

GitDown::parse($markdown);

// Will be cached forever. (suggested)
GitDown::parseAndCache($markdown);

// Will be cached for 24 hours. (minutes in Laravel < 5.8, seconds otherwise)
GitDown::parseAndCache($markdown, $seconds = 86400);

// Pass in your own custom caching strategy.
GitDown::parseAndCache($markdown, function ($parse) {
    return Cache::rememberForever(sha1($markdown), function () use ($parse) {
        return $parse();
    });
});

Allowing Dangerous Tags

By default, GitHub sanitizes HTML tags it deems "unsafe" like <iframe>s. However, it's common to embed video or audio into your markdown with <iframe>s.

GitDown can intelligently preserve your tags by filling the allowedTags config array option in config/gitdown.php with the tags you want to prevent being parsed.

"allowedTags" => [
    'iframe',
],

Non-Laravel Usage

You can set a GitHub Personal Access Token by passing it into the GitDown's constructor. new GitDown\GitDown($token)

// You can pass config options into the constructur:
$gitDown = new GitDown\GitDown(
    $token = 'foo',
    $context = 'your/repo',
    $allowedTags = []
);

$gitDown->parse($markdown);

// Pass in your own custom caching strategy.
$gitDown->parseAndCache($markdown, function ($parse) {
    return Cache::rememberForever(sha1($markdown), function () use ($parse) {
        return $parse();
    });
});

Markdown/Syntax CSS

Styling markdown with CSS has always been a bit of a pain for me. Not to mention trying to style syntax inside code blocks. Not to worry!

GitDown ships with all the CSS you need to make your markdown look exactly like it does on GitHub. Just add this code somewhere on your HTML page, preferably near your other stylesheets in the <head> section.

<head>
    [...]
    @gitdown
</head>

Non-Laravel

<head>
    [...]
    <style><?php echo GitDown\GitDown::styles(); ?></style>
</head>

Bam! That's all you need to make everything look good 🤙.

If echoing out CSS directly on your page doesn't sit well with you, you can add the styles to your stylesheet yourself using NPM.

npm install primer-markdown github-syntax-light --save

Now you can include the SCSS files in your Sass bundler:

@import "primer-markdown/index.scss";
// The relative directories may be a little different for you.
@import "./../../node_modules/github-syntax-light/lib/github-light.css";

GitHub Flavored Markdown

To enable GFM parsing for GitDown, set the "context" entry in config/gitdown.php to a repository name.

"context" => "your/repo",

Enjoy!

Hope this makes your life easier. If it does, show the project some love on Twitter and tag me: @calebporzio

calebporzio/gitdown

calebporzio

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