Mark
Mark — a tool for syncing your markdown documentation with Atlassian Confluence pages.
Read the blog post discussing the tool — https://samizdat.dev/use-markdown-for-confluence/
This is very useful if you store documentation to your software in a Git repository and don't want to do an extra job of updating Confluence page using a tinymce wysiwyg enterprise core editor which always breaks everything.
Mark does the same but in a different way. Mark reads your markdown file, creates a Confluence page if it's not found by its name, uploads attachments, translates Markdown into HTML and updates the contents of the page via REST API. It's like you don't even need to create sections/pages in your Confluence anymore, just use them in your Markdown documentation.
Mark uses an extended file format, which, still being valid markdown, contains several HTML-ish metadata headers, which can be used to locate page inside Confluence instance and update it accordingly.
File in the extended format should follow the specification:
<!-- Space: <space key> -->
<!-- Parent: <parent 1> -->
<!-- Parent: <parent 2> -->
<!-- Title: <title> -->
<!-- Attachment: <local path> -->
<!-- Label: <label 1> -->
<!-- Label: <label 2> -->
<page contents>There can be any number of Parent headers, if Mark can't find specified
parent by title, Mark creates it.
Also, optional following headers are supported:
<!-- Layout: (article|plain) -->- (default) article: content will be put in narrow column for ease of reading;
- plain: content will fill all page;
<!-- Type: (page|blogpost) -->- (default) page: normal Confluence page - defaults to this if omitted
- blogpost: Blog post in
Space. Cannot haveParent(s)
<!-- Content-Appearance: (full-width|fixed) -->- (default) full-width: content will fill the full page width
- fixed: content will be rendered in a fixed narrow view
<!-- Sidebar: <h2>Test</h2> -->Setting the sidebar creates a column on the right side. You're able to add any valid HTML content. Adding this property sets the layout to article.
Mark supports Go templates, which can be included into article by using path to the template relative to current working dir, e.g.:
<!-- Include: <path> -->Optionally the delimiters can be defined:
<!-- Include: <path>
Delims: "<<", ">>"
-->Or they can be switched off to disable processing:
<!-- Include: <path>
Delims: none
-->Note: Switching delimiters off really simply changes them to ASCII characters "\x00" and "\x01" which, usually should not occure in a template.
Templates can accept configuration data in YAML format which immediately
follows the Include and Delims tag, if present:
<!-- Include: <path>
<yaml-data> -->Mark also supports attachments. The standard way involves declaring an
Attachment along with the other items in the header, then have any links
with the same path:
<!-- Attachment: <path-to-image> -->
<beginning of page content>
An attached link is [here](<path-to-image>)NOTE: Be careful with Attachment! If your path string is a subset of
another longer string or referenced in text, you may get undesired behavior.
Mark also supports macro definitions, which are defined as regexps which will be replaced with specified template:
<!-- Macro: <regexp>
Template: <path>
<yaml-data> -->NOTE: Make sure to define your macros after your metadata (Title/Space), mark will stop processing metadata if it hits a Macro.
Capture groups can be defined in the macro's which can be later
referenced in the <yaml-data> using ${<number>} syntax, where <number> is
number of a capture group in regexp (${0} is used for entire regexp match),
for example:
<!-- Macro: MYJIRA-\d+
Template: ac:jira:ticket
Ticket: ${0} -->Macros can also use inline templates.
Inline templates are templates where the template content
is described in the <yaml-data>.
The Template value starts with a #, followed by the key
used in the <yaml-data>.
The key's value must be a string which defines the template's content.
<!-- Macro: <tblbox\s+(.*?)\s*>
Template: #inline
title: ${1}
inline: |
<table>
<thead><tr><th>{{ .title }}</th></tr></thead>
<tbody><tr><td>
-->
<!-- Macro: </tblbox>
Template: #also_inline
also_inline: |
</td></tr></tbody></table>
-->
<tblbox with a title>
and some
content
</tblbox>Customizing the page layout
If you set the Layout to plain, the page layout can be customized using HTML comments inside the markdown:
<!-- Layout: plain -->
<!-- ac:layout -->
<!-- ac:layout-section type:three_with_sidebars -->
<!-- ac:layout-cell -->
More Content
<!-- ac:layout-cell end -->
<!-- ac:layout-cell -->
More Content
<!-- ac:layout-cell end -->
<!-- ac:layout-cell -->
Even More Content
<!-- ac:layout-cell end -->
<!-- ac:layout-section end -->
<!-- ac:layout-section type:single -->
<!-- ac:layout-cell -->
Still More Content
<!-- ac:layout-cell end -->
<!-- ac:layout-section end -->
<!-- ac:layout end -->Please be aware that mark does not validate the layout, so it's your responsibility to create a valid layout.
Code Blocks
If you have long code blocks, you can make them collapsible with the Code Block Macro:
```bash collapse
...
some long bash code block
...
```
And you can also add a title:
```bash collapse title Some long long bash function
...
some long bash code block
...
```
Or linenumbers, by giving the first number
```bash 1 collapse title Some long long bash function
...
some long bash code block
...
```
And even themes
```bash 1 collapse midnight title Some long long bash function
...
some long bash code block
...
```
Please note that, if you want to have a code block without a language
use - as the first character, if you want to have the other goodies
``` - 1 collapse midnight title Some long long code
...
some long code block
...
```
Block Quotes
Block Quotes are converted to Confluence Info/Warn/Note box when the following conditions are met
- The BlockQuote is on the root level of the document (not nested)
- The first line of the BlockQuote contains one of the following patterns
Info/Warn/Note
In any other case the default behaviour will be resumed and html <blockquote> tag will be used
Template & Macros
By default, mark provides several built-in templates and macros:
-
template
ac:statusto include badge-like text, which accepts following parameters:- Title: text to display in the badge
- Color: color to use as background/border for badge
- Grey
- Red
- Yellow
- Green
- Blue
- Subtle: specify to fill badge with background or not
- true
- false
-
template
ac:boxto include info, tip, note, and warning text boxes. Parameters:- Name: select box style
- info
- tip
- note
- warning
- Icon: show information/tip/exclamation mark/warning icon
- true
- false
- Title: title text of the box
- Body: text to display in the box
See: https://confluence.atlassian.com/conf59/info-tip-note-and-warning-macros-792499127.html
- Name: select box style
-
template
ac:jira:ticketto include JIRA ticket link. Parameters:- Ticket: Jira ticket number like BUGS-123.
See: https://confluence.atlassian.com/conf59/status-macro-792499207.html
-
template
ac:jira:filterto include JIRA Filters/Searches. Parameters:- JQL: The "JQL" query of the search
- Server (Optional): The Jira server to fetch the query from if its not the default of "System Jira"
-
template
ac:jiraissuesto include a list of JIRA tickets. Parameters:- URL (Required), The URL of the XML view of your selected issues. (link to the filter)
- Anonymous (Optional) If this parameter is set to 'true', your JIRA application will return only the issues which allow unrestricted viewing. That is, the issues which are visible to anonymous viewers. If this parameter is omitted or set to 'false', then the results depend on how your administrator has configured the communication between the JIRA application and Confluence. By default, Confluence will show only the issues which the user is authorised to view.
- BaseURL (Optional) If you specify a 'baseurl', then the link in the header, pointing to your JIRA application, will use this base URL instead of the value of the 'url' parameter. This is useful when Confluence connects to JIRA with a different URL from the one used by other users.
- Columns (Optional) A list of JIRA column names, separated by semi-colons (;). You can include many columns recognized by your JIRA application, including custom columns.
- Count (Optional) If this parameter is set to 'true', the issue list will show the number of issues in JIRA. The count will be linked to your JIRA site.
- Cache (Optional) The macro maintains a cache of the issues which result from the JIRA query. If the 'cache' parameter is set to 'off', the relevant part of the cache is cleared each time the macro is reloaded. (The value 'false' also works and has the same effect as 'off'.)
- Height (Optional) The height in pixels of the table displaying the issues.
- RenderMode (Optional) If the value is 'dynamic', the JIRA Issues macro offers an interactive display.
- Title (Optional) You can customise the title text at the top of the issues table with this parameter. For instance, setting the title to 'Bugs-to-fix' will replace the default 'JIRA Issues' text. This can help provide more context to the list of issues displayed.
- Width (Optional) The width of the table displaying the issues. Can be entered as a percentage (%) or in pixels (px).
See: https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/jira-issues-macro-139380.html
-
template:
ac:emoticonto include emoticons. Parameters:- Name: select emoticon
- smile
- sad
- cheeky
- laugh
- wink
- thumbs-up
- thumbs-down
- information
- tick
- cross
- warning
- plus
- minus
- question
- light-on
- light-off
- yellow-star
- red-star
- green-star
- blue-star
See: https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/confluence-storage-format-790796544.html
- Name: select emoticon
-
template:
ac:youtubeto include YouTube Widget. Parameters:- URL: YouTube video endpoint
- Width: Width in px. Defaults to "640px"
- Height: Height in px. Defaults to "360px"
-
template:
ac:childrento include Children Display macro- Reverse (Reverse Sort): Use with the
Sort Children Byparameter. When set, the sort order changes from ascending to descending.truefalse(Default)
- Sort (Sort Children By):
creation— to sort by content creation datetitle— to sort alphabetically on titlemodified— to sort of last modification date.- If not specified, manual sorting is used if manually ordered, otherwise alphabetical.
- Style (Heading Style): Choose the style used to display descendants.
- from
h1toh6 - If not specified, default style is applied.
- from
- Page (Parent Page):
/— to list the top-level pages of the current space, i.e. those without parents.pagename— to list the children of the specified page.spacekey:pagename— to list the children of the specified page in the specified space.- If not specified, the current page is used.
- Excerpt (Include Excerpts): Allows you to include a short excerpt under each page in the list.
none- no excerpt will be displayed. (Default)simple- displays the first line of text contained in an Excerpt macro any of the returned pages. If there is not an Excerpt macro on the page, nothing will be shown.rich content- displays the contents of an Excerpt macro, or if there is not an Excerpt macro on the page, the first part of the page content, including formatted text, images and some macros.
- First (Number of Children): Restrict the number of child pages that are displayed at the top level.
- If not specified, no limit is applied.
- Depth (Depth of Descendants): Enter a number to specify the depth of descendants to display. For example, if the value is 2, the macro will display 2 levels of child pages. This setting has no effect if
Show Descendantsis enabled.- If not specified, no limit is applied.
- All (Show Descendants): Choose whether to display all the parent page's descendants.
truefalse(Default)
See: https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/children-display-macro-139501.html
- Reverse (Reverse Sort): Use with the
-
template:
ac:iframeto include iframe macro (cloud only)- URL: URL to the iframe.
- Frameborder: Choose whether to draw a border around content in the iframe.
show(Default)hide
- Width: Width in px. Defaults to "640px"
- Height: Height in px. Defaults to "360px"
- Scrolling: Allow or prevent scrolling in the iframe to see additional content.
yesnoauto(Default)
- Align: Align the iframe to the left or right of the page.
left(Default)right
See: https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/insert-the-iframe-macro
-
template:
ac:blog-poststo include blog-posts- Content: How much content will be shown
- titles (default)
- excerpts
- entire
- Time: Specify how much back in time Confluence should look for blog posts (default: unlimited)
- Label: Restrict to blog posts with specific labels
- Author: Restrict to blog posts by specific authors
- Spaces: Restrict to blog posts in specific spaces
- Max: Maximum number of blog posts shown (default: 15)
- Sort: Sorting posts by
- title
- creation (default)
- modified
- Reverse: Reverses the Sort parameter from oldest to newest (default: false)
See: https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/blog-posts-macro-139470.html
- Content: How much content will be shown
-
template:
ac:includeto include a page- Page: the page to be included
- Space: the space the page is in (optional, otherwise same space)
-
template:
ac:excerpt-includeto include the excerpt from another page- Page: the page the excerpt should be included from
- NoPanel: Determines whether Confluence will display a panel around the excerpted content (optional, default: false)
-
template:
ac:excerptto create an excerpt and include it in the page- Excerpt: The text you want to include
- OutputType: Determines whether the content of the Excerpt macro body is displayed on a new line or inline (optional, options: "BLOCK" or "INLINE", default: BLOCK)
- Hidden: Hide the excerpt content (optional, default: false)
-
template:
ac:anchorto set an anchor inside a page- Anchor: Text for the anchor
- template:
ac:expandto display an expandable/collapsible section of text on your page- Title: Defines the text next to the expand/collapse icon.
- Body: The Text that it is expanded to.
-
template:
ac:profileto display a short summary of a given Confluence user's profile.- Name: The username of the Confluence user whose profile summary you wish to show.
-
template:
ac:contentbylabelto display a list of pages, blog posts or attachments that have particular labels- CQL: The CQL query to discover the content
-
template:
ac:detailssummaryto show summary information from one page on a another page- Headings: Column headings to show
- CQL: The CQL query to discover the pages
- SortBy: Sort by a specific column heading
-
template:
ac:detailsto create page properties- Body: Must contain a table with two rows, the table headings are used as property key. The table content is the value.
-
macro
@{...}to mention user by name specified in the braces.
Template & Macros Usecases
Insert Disclaimer
disclaimer.md
**NOTE**: this document is generated, do not edit manually.article.md
<!-- Space: TEST -->
<!-- Title: My Article -->
<!-- Include: disclaimer.md -->
This is my article.Insert Status Badge
article.md
<!-- Space: TEST -->
<!-- Title: TODO List -->
<!-- Macro: :done:
Template: ac:status
Title: DONE
Color: Green -->
<!-- Macro: :todo:
Template: ac:status
Title: TODO
Color: Blue -->
* :done: Write Article
* :todo: Publish ArticleInsert Colored Text Box
article.md
<!-- Space: TEST -->
<!-- Title: Announcement -->
<!-- Macro: :box:([^:]+):([^:]*):(.+):
Template: ac:box
Icon: true
Name: ${1}
Title: ${2}
Body: ${3} -->
:box:info::Foobar:
:box:tip:Tip of day:Foobar:
:box:note::Foobar:
:box:warning:Alert!:Foobar:Insert Table of Contents
<!-- Include: ac:toc -->If default TOC looks don't find a way to your heart, try parametrizing it, for example:
<!-- Macro: :toc:
Template: ac:toc
Printable: 'false'
MinLevel: 2 -->
# This is my nice title
:toc:You can call the Macro as you like but the Template field must have the ac:toc value.
Also, note the single quotes around 'false'.
See Confluence TOC Macro for the list of parameters - keep in mind that here they start with capital letters. Every skipped field will have the default value, so feel free to include only the ones that you require.
Insert Children Display
To include Children Display (TOC displaying children pages) use following macro:
<!-- Macro: :children:
Template: ac:children
-->
# This is my nicer title
:children:You can use various parameters to modify Children Display:
<!-- Macro: :children:
Template: ac:children
Sort: title
Style: h3
Excerpt: simple
First: 10
Page: Space:Page title
Depth: 2
Reverse: false
All: false -->
# This is my nicest title
:children:Insert Jira Ticket
article.md
<!-- Space: TEST -->
<!-- Title: TODO List -->
<!-- Macro: MYJIRA-\d+
Template: ac:jira:ticket
Ticket: ${0} -->
See task MYJIRA-123.Insert link to existing confluence page by title
This is a [link to an existing confluence page](ac:Pagetitle)
And this is how to link when the linktext is the same as the [Pagetitle](ac:)
Link to a [page title with space](<ac:With Space>)Upload and included inline images
will automatically upload the inlined image as an attachment and inline the image using the ac:image template.
If the file is not found, it will inline the image using the ac:image template and link to the image.
Add width for an image
Use the following macro:
<!-- Macro: \!\[.*\]\((.+)\)\<\!\-\- width=(.*) \-\-\>
Template: ac:image
Attachment: ${1}
Width: ${2} -->And attach any image with the following
<!-- width=300 -->The width will be the commented html after the image (in this case 300px).
Currently this is not compatible with the automated upload of inline images.
Render Mermaid Diagram
Confluence doesn't provide mermaid.js support natively. Mark provides a convenient way to enable the feature like Github does. As long as you have a code block and are marked as "mermaid", the mark will automatically render it as a PNG image and insert into before the code block.
```mermaid title diagrams_example
graph TD;
A-->B;
```
In order to properly render mermaid, you can choose between the following mermaid providers:
- "mermaid-go" via mermaid.go
- "cloudscript" via cloudscript-io-mermaid-addon
Installation
Homebrew
brew tap kovetskiy/mark
brew install markGo Install / Go Get
go install github.com/kovetskiy/mark@latestFor older versions
go get -v github.com/kovetskiy/markReleases
Download a release from the Releases page
Docker
$ docker run --rm -i kovetskiy/mark:latest mark <params>Compile and install using docker-compose
Mostly useful when you intend to enhance mark.
# Create the binary
$ docker-compose run markbuilder
# "install" the binary
$ cp mark /usr/local/binUsage
USAGE:
mark [global options] [arguments...]
VERSION:
9.5.2
DESCRIPTION:
Mark is a tool to update Atlassian Confluence pages from markdown. Documentation is available here: https://github.com/kovetskiy/mark
GLOBAL OPTIONS:
--files value, -f value use specified markdown file(s) for converting to html. Supports file globbing patterns (needs to be quoted). [$MARK_FILES]
--compile-only show resulting HTML and don't update Confluence page content. (default: false) [$MARK_COMPILE_ONLY]
--dry-run resolve page and ancestry, show resulting HTML and exit. (default: false) [$MARK_DRY_RUN]
--edit-lock, -k lock page editing to current user only to prevent accidental manual edits over Confluence Web UI. (default: false) [$MARK_EDIT_LOCK]
--drop-h1, --h1_drop don't include the first H1 heading in Confluence output. (default: false) [$MARK_H1_DROP]
--title-from-h1, --h1_title extract page title from a leading H1 heading. If no H1 heading on a page exists, then title must be set in the page metadata. (default: false) [$MARK_H1_TITLE]
--minor-edit don't send notifications while updating Confluence page. (default: false) [$MARK_MINOR_EDIT]
--color value display logs in color. Possible values: auto, never. (default: "auto") [$MARK_COLOR]
--debug enable debug logs. (default: false) [$MARK_DEBUG]
--trace enable trace logs. (default: false) [$MARK_TRACE]
--username value, -u value use specified username for updating Confluence page. [$MARK_USERNAME]
--password value, -p value use specified token for updating Confluence page. Specify - as password to read password from stdin, or your Personal access token. Username is not mandatory if personal access token is provided. For more info please see: https://developer.atlassian.com/server/confluence/confluence-server-rest-api/#authentication. [$MARK_PASSWORD]
--target-url value, -l value edit specified Confluence page. If -l is not specified, file should contain metadata (see above). [$MARK_TARGET_URL]
--base-url value, -b value, --base_url value base URL for Confluence. Alternative option for base_url config field. [$MARK_BASE_URL]
--config value, -c value use the specified configuration file. (default: "~/.config/mark") [$MARK_CONFIG]
--ci run on CI mode. It won't fail if files are not found. (default: false) [$MARK_CI]
--space value use specified space key. If the space key is not specified, it must be set in the page metadata. [$MARK_SPACE]
--mermaid-provider value defines the mermaid provider to use. Supported options are: cloudscript, mermaid-go. (default: "cloudscript") [$MARK_MERMAID_PROVIDER]
--help, -h show help
--version, -v print the version
You can store user credentials in the configuration file, which should be
located in ~/.config/mark (or specified via -c --config <path>) with the following format (TOML):
username = "your-email"
password = "password-or-api-key-for-confluence-cloud"
# If you are using Confluence Cloud add the /wiki suffix to base_url
base-url = "http://confluence.local"
title-from-h1 = true
drop-h1 = trueNOTE: Labels aren't supported when using minor-edit!
Tricks
Continuous Integration
It's quite trivial to integrate Mark into a CI/CD system, here is an example with Snake CI in case of self-hosted Bitbucket Server / Data Center.
stages:
- sync
Sync documentation:
stage: sync
only:
branches:
- main
image: kovetskiy/mark
commands:
- for file in $(find -type f -name '*.md'); do
echo "> Sync $file";
mark -u $MARK_USER -p $MARK_PASS -b $MARK_URL -f $file || exit 1;
echo;
doneIn this example, I'm using the kovetskiy/mark image for creating a job container where the
repository with documentation will be cloned to. The following command finds all *.md files and runs mark against them one by one:
for file in $(find -type f -name '*.md'); do
echo "> Sync $file";
mark -u $MARK_USER -p $MARK_PASS -b $MARK_URL -f $file || exit 1;
echo;
doneThe following directive tells the CI to run this particular job only if the changes are pushed into the
main branch. It means you can safely push your changes into feature branches without being afraid
that they automatically shown in Confluence, then go through the reviewal process and automatically
deploy them when PR got merged.
only:
branches:
- mainFile Globbing
Rather than running mark multiple times, or looping through a list of files from find, you can use file globbing (i.e. wildcard patterns) to match files in subdirectories. For example:
mark -f "helpful_cmds/*.md"Issues, Bugs & Contributions
I've started the project to solve my own problem and open sourced the solution so anyone who has a problem like me can solve it too. I have no profits/sponsors from this projects which means I don't really prioritize working on this project in my free time. I still check the issues and do code reviews for Pull Requests which means if you encounter a bug in the program, you should not expect me to fix it as soon as possible, but I'll be very glad to merge your own contributions into the project and release the new version.
I try to label all new issues so it's easy to find a bug or a feature request to fix/implement, if you are willing to help with the project, you can use the following labels to find issues, just make sure to reply in the issue to let everyone know you took the issue:
Contributors ✨
Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):
This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!