micro-markdown

micro-markdown

A markdown server.

⚠️ Under active development; not stable! ⚠️

micro-markdown is a markdown server. It serves both markdown files and markdown strings. It's built on top of Zeit's micro, and uses a redis cache by default. In the spirit of micro, micro-markdown tries to be as async as possible.

micro-markdown can be used as an API for rendering and serving markdown, or as a server for a markdown based website.

Markdown files

To serve a markdown file, add a file to the ./texts directory (this path is customizable).

<!-- ./texts/hello.md -->
# Hello, world.

I am some markdown.

// ./server.js
const server = require('micro-markdown')
/**
 * Start the server.
 * The rendered HTML will be available at `http://localhost:3000/mm/api/v1/html/hello`
 */
server().listen(3000)

Custom handlers

You can also pass a route handlers directly to micro-markdown:

// ./server.js
const server = require('micro-markdown')
/**
 * Start the server.
 * The rendered HTML will be available at `http://localhost:3000/mm/api/v1/html/example`
 */
server({
  routes: {
    'example': {
      handler: () => ({ markdown: '# Hello, example.' })
    }
  }
}).listen(3000)

API

By default, micro-markdown renders three endpoints for each route:

• /mm/api/v1/html/:endpoint: Returns the rendered HTML for :endpoint
• /mm/api/v1/json/:endpoint: Returns a JSON object representing the provided markdown for :endpoint.
• /mm/api/v1/raw/:endpoint: Returns the raw markdown string for :endpoint.

Route maps

You can pass route maps to micro-markdown to mirror existing endpoints. This is helpful if you want to use micro-markdown to serve a markdown-based website.

// ./server.js
const server = require('micro-markdown')
/**
 * Start the server.
 * The rendered HTML will be available at `http://localhost:3000/example`
 */
server({
  routes: {
    'example': {
      handler: () => ({ markdown: '# Hello, example.' })
    }
  },
  routeMaps: {
    default: route => { // Resolve `/mm/api/v1/html/${foo}` to `/${foo}`
      return route.indexOf("/mm") === 0
        ? {}
        : { route: `${route}`, target: "html" };
    }
  }
}).listen(3000)

Caching

Rendered markup is cached by default, using redis. To use the redis cache, provide the following environment variables:

REDIS_HOST="YOUR_REDIS_HOST" # Default `redis`
REDIS_PORT="YOUR_REDIS_PASSWORD" # Default `6379`
# Optional
REDIS_PASSWORD="YOUR_REDIS_PASSWORD"

By default, micro-markdown will flush the redis cache the first time it is called.

Why?

I wanted a simple server that would dynamically render and route markdown.

I tried other options:

• Static site: Renders markdown, but requires a build.
• SSR with React, Vue etc.: There are great tools for this. I couldn't find a good option that would let my dynamically render flat markdown files to custom routes, though.