Markdown Read

Convert any URL to Markdown.

Try it online: HTML To Markdown

Tech Stack

• @mozilla/readability for read meaning html
• turndown for html to markdown
• jsdom for parse html

Usage

You will need Node.js installed on your system, then install it globally.

$ npm i -g markdown-read

# Turn current page to markdown
$ markdown https://example.com
## Example Domain

This domain is for use in illustrative examples in documents. You may use this domain in literature without prior coordination or asking for permission.

[More information...](https://www.iana.org/domains/example)

Options

• --header: Add custom headers to the request. This can be useful for setting user-agent strings or other HTTP headers required by the target website.

Example:

$ markdown https://httpbin.org/get --header 'User-Agent: Markdown Reader'

API Reference

markdown(url: string, options?: MarkdownOptions): Promise<MarkdownContent | null>

Converts a web page to Markdown format.

• url: The URL of the web page to convert
• options: Optional settings for document retrieval and Markdown conversion
  • headers: Additional headers to include in the request
  • fetcher: Custom function to fetch the HTML content
  • All options from TurndownOptions are also supported

Returns a Promise that resolves to a MarkdownContent object or null if conversion fails.

MarkdownContent

The MarkdownContent object extends ReadabilityContent and includes:

• markdown: The converted Markdown content
• length: The length of the Markdown content
• url: The original URL of the web page

turndown(html: string, options?: TurndownOptions): string

Converts HTML content to Markdown.

• html: The HTML string to convert
• options: Optional settings for Turndown conversion. These options will override the default settings.

Returns the Markdown representation of the input HTML.

Default Options

{
  emDelimiter: '*',
  codeBlockStyle: 'fenced',
  fence: '```',
  headingStyle: 'atx',
  bulletListMarker: '+'
}

Example

import { turndown } from 'markdown-read';

const html = '<h1>Hello</h1><em>World</em>';
const options = {
  headingStyle: 'setext',
  emDelimiter: '_'
};

const markdown = turndown(html, options);
console.log(markdown);
// Output:
// Hello
// =====
//
// _World_

For a full list of available options, please refer to the Turndown Options documentation.

Advanced Features

• Handles lazy-loaded images by setting their src attribute.
• Extracts byline information from meta tags.
• Supports platform-specific processing for various websites.
• Uses Mozilla's Readability for content extraction.
• Allows custom fetching logic through the fetcher option.