cppMarkdown is a library aiming at parsing Markdown syntax to tree structure, and building Markdown documents from scratch. Parsed document may be iterated element by element, or simply exported to HTML.

Supported syntax

The following core Markdown syntax elements are supported:

• Blockquote
• Code
• Heading
• Line break
• Line
• List
• Paragraph

In addition, an extended syntax elements are provided as extensions:

• Table

Span elements supported by Span class:

• Links
• Emphasis (bold, italic, bold-italic)
• Code (including double backtick)
• Images
• Reference-style links and images

Not supported functionality (TODO)

• Backslash escaping
• Automatic links

Note: In order to use extensions provided by the library, it is required to enable standard extensions. The quickest way of doing so is by using Markdown::registerStandardExtensions(); function.

Usage

To begin using cppMarkdown, link your project against cppMarkdown library, and include cppmarkdown.h all-in-one header.

Parsing

The simplest use case of cppMarkdown is to simply parse given Markdown code and export it to HTML code:

std::string markdown = "...";
Markdown::Document doc;
doc.parse(markdown);
std::string html = doc.getHtml();

Traversal

It is also possible to traverse resulting element tree:

void traverseContainer(Markdown::ElementContainer *container)
{
    if (auto* el = dynamic_cast<Markdown::Element*>(container))
    {
        // Do something with 'el'
    }

    traverseContainer(container);
}

Markdown::Document doc;
doc.parse(markdown);

traverseContainer(&doc);

Single element parsing

Every Markdown element may be parsed independently from the document.

Markdown::ListElement el(R"list(1. First
2. Second
    1. Nested 1
    2. Nested 2
Paragraph)list");
std::string html = el.getHtml();

The above code will parse multi-leveled list into HTML code without usage of the Document class.

Document creation

It is possible to create a Markdown document from elements opposed to source.

Markdown::Document doc;
auto h1 = std::make_shared<Markdown::HeadingElement>(Markdown::HeadingElement::Heading::Heading1, "This is heading");
auto p = std::make_shared<Markdown::ParagraphElement>("And this is paragraph");
doc.addElement(h1);
doc.addElement(p);
std::string html = doc.getHtml(); // Get HTML
std::string text = doc.getText(); // Get plaintext
std::string markdown = doc.getMarkdown(); // Get Markdown code