ckeditor5

What is ckeditor5?

CKEditor 5 is a modern JavaScript rich text editor with a modular architecture. It offers a wide range of features and is highly customizable, making it suitable for various types of content editing needs.

What are ckeditor5's main functionalities?

Basic Text Editing

This code initializes a basic CKEditor 5 instance with classic build, allowing users to perform basic text editing tasks such as bold, italic, and underline.

import ClassicEditor from '@ckeditor/ckeditor5-build-classic';

ClassicEditor.create(document.querySelector('#editor'))
  .then(editor => {
    console.log('Editor was initialized', editor);
  })
  .catch(error => {
    console.error(error);
  });

Custom Plugins

This code demonstrates how to initialize CKEditor 5 with custom plugins. In this example, only the Bold and Italic plugins are included, and the toolbar is customized to show only these options.

import ClassicEditor from '@ckeditor/ckeditor5-editor-classic/src/classiceditor';
import Essentials from '@ckeditor/ckeditor5-essentials/src/essentials';
import Bold from '@ckeditor/ckeditor5-basic-styles/src/bold';
import Italic from '@ckeditor/ckeditor5-basic-styles/src/italic';

ClassicEditor.create(document.querySelector('#editor'), {
  plugins: [Essentials, Bold, Italic],
  toolbar: ['bold', 'italic']
})
  .then(editor => {
    console.log('Editor was initialized with custom plugins', editor);
  })
  .catch(error => {
    console.error(error);
  });

Real-time Collaboration

This code initializes CKEditor 5 with real-time collaboration features, allowing multiple users to edit the same document simultaneously and see each other's changes in real-time.

import ClassicEditor from '@ckeditor/ckeditor5-editor-classic/src/classiceditor';
import RealTimeCollaborativeEditing from '@ckeditor/ckeditor5-real-time-collaboration/src/realtimecollaborativeediting';
import RealTimeCollaborativeComments from '@ckeditor/ckeditor5-real-time-collaboration/src/realtimecollaborativecomments';

ClassicEditor.create(document.querySelector('#editor'), {
  plugins: [RealTimeCollaborativeEditing, RealTimeCollaborativeComments],
  toolbar: ['comment', 'trackChanges']
})
  .then(editor => {
    console.log('Editor was initialized with real-time collaboration', editor);
  })
  .catch(error => {
    console.error(error);
  });

Other packages similar to ckeditor5

tinymce

TinyMCE is another popular rich text editor that offers a wide range of features and customization options. It is known for its ease of integration and extensive plugin library. Compared to CKEditor 5, TinyMCE has a more traditional architecture but offers similar functionalities.

quill

Quill is a lightweight, open-source rich text editor with a focus on simplicity and extensibility. It provides a clean API and is highly customizable. While it may not have as many built-in features as CKEditor 5, it is a good choice for projects that require a simple and flexible editor.

draft-js

Draft.js is a rich text editor framework for React, developed by Facebook. It provides a lot of flexibility and control over the editor's behavior and appearance. Unlike CKEditor 5, which is a complete solution, Draft.js is more of a toolkit for building custom editors.

README

CKEditor 5

CKEditor 5 is an ultra-modern JavaScript rich-text editor with MVC architecture, a custom data model, and virtual DOM. It is written from scratch in TypeScript and has excellent webpack and Vite support. It provides every type of WYSIWYG editing solution imaginable with extensive collaboration support. From editors similar to Google Docs and Medium to Slack or Twitter-like applications, all is possible within a single editing framework. As a market leader, it is constantly expanded and updated.

Table of contents

• CKEditor 5
  • Table of contents
  • Quick start
    • CKEditor 5 online builder
    • CKEditor 5 predefined builds
      • Example installation
    • TypeScript support
    • CKEditor 5 advanced installation
      • CKEditor 5 Framework
  • Documentation and FAQ
  • Releases
  • Editing and collaboration features
  • Contributing and project organization
    • Ideas and discussions
    • Development
    • Reporting issues and feature requests
  • License

Quick start

CKEditor 5 online builder

The easiest way to start using CKEditor 5 with all the features you need, is to prepare a customized build with the online builder. All you need to do is choose the preferred predefined build as a base, add all the required plugins, and download the ready-to-use package. Refer to the Online builder Quick start guide to follow this installation path.

CKEditor 5 predefined builds

CKEditor 5 predefined builds are a set of ready-to-use rich text editors. Every build provides a single type of editor with a set of features and a default configuration.

The following CKEditor 5 predefined builds are currently available:

• Classic editor
• Inline editor
• Balloon editor
• Balloon block editor
• Document editor

Example installation

Creating an editor using a CKEditor 5 build is very simple and can be described in two steps:

1. Load the desired editor via the <script> tag.
2. Call the static create() method to create the editor.

In your HTML page, add an element that CKEditor should replace:

<div id="editor"></div>

Load the classic editor build (you can choose between the CDN, npm, and zip downloads):

<script src="https://cdn.ckeditor.com/ckeditor5/39.0.2/classic/ckeditor.js"></script>

Call the ClassicEditor.create() method:

<script>
	ClassicEditor
		.create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ) )
		.catch( error => {
			console.error( error );
		} );
</script>

You’re ready to go!

To find out how to start with other builds, check the Predefined builds guide in the CKEditor 5 documentation.

TypeScript support

CKEditor 5 is a TypeScript project. Starting from v37.0.0, it offers native type definitions. Check out our dedicated guide to read more about TypeScript support.

CKEditor 5 advanced installation

For more advanced users or those who need to integrate CKEditor 5 with their applications, we have prepared several other, advanced methods to do it. You can:

• Integrate the editor from source using webpack or Vite
• Use DLL builds
• Use some of the pre-made integrations with popular JavaScript frameworks:
  • Angular
  • React
  • Vue

CKEditor 5 Framework

CKEditor 5 builds allow you to quickly and easily initialize one of the many types of editors in your application. At the same time, CKEditor 5 is also a framework for creating custom-made rich text editing solutions.

To find out how to start building your editor from scratch go to the CKEditor 5 Framework overview section of the CKEditor 5 documentation.

Documentation and FAQ

Extensive documentation dedicated to all things CKEditor 5-related is available. You will find basic guides that will help you kick off your project, advanced deep-dive tutorials to tailor the editor to your specific needs, and help sections with solutions and answers to any of your possible questions. To find out more refer to the following CKEditor 5 documentation sections:

• Installing CKEditor 5
• CKEditor 5 features
• CKEditor 5 examples
• Updating CKEditor 5
• Getting CKEditor 5 support
• CKEditor 5 Framework
• API documentation

For FAQ please go to the CKEditor Ecosystem help center. For a high-level overview of the project see the CKEditor Ecosystem website.

Releases

Follow the CKEditor 5 changelog for release details and check out the CKEditor 5 release blog posts on the CKSource blog for important release highlights and additional information.

Editing and collaboration features

The CKEditor 5 Framework offers access to a plethora of various plugins, supporting all kinds of editing features.

From collaborative editing support providing comments and tracking changes, through editing tools that let users control the content looks and structure such as tables, lists, font styles, to accessibility helpers and multi-language support - CKEditor 5 is easily extensible and customizable. Special duty features like Markdown input and output and source editing, or export to PDF and Word provide solutions for users with diverse and specialized needs. Images and videos are easily supported and CKEditor 5 offers various upload and storage systems to manage these.

The number of options and the ease of customization and adding new ones make the editing experience even better for any environment and professional background.

Refer to the CKEditor 5 Features documentation for details.

Contributing and project organization

Ideas and discussions

The development repository of CKEditor 5 is located at https://github.com/ckeditor/ckeditor5. This is the best place for bringing opinions and contributions. Letting the core team know if they are going in the right or wrong direction is great feedback and will be much appreciated!

Development

CKEditor 5 is a modular, multi-package, monorepo project. It consists of several packages that create the editing framework, based on which the feature packages are implemented.

The ckeditor5 repository is the place that centralizes the development of CKEditor 5. It bundles different packages into a single place, adding the necessary helper tools for the development workflow, like the builder and the test runner. Basic information on how to set up the development environment can be found in the documentation.

See the official contributors' guide to learn how to contribute your code to the project.

Reporting issues and feature requests

Report issues in the ckeditor5 repository. Read more on the Getting support guide.

License

Licensed under the terms of GNU General Public License Version 2 or later. For full details about the license, please check the LICENSE.md file or https://ckeditor.com/legal/ckeditor-oss-license.