Doc-e-mate, your document's best friend

This repository holds the dem commandline tool, that allows you to generate and print documents written in Markdown, styled in CSS, with business data injected from JSON or YAML files.

> Text     + Data  + Style  ->  Beautiful Business Documents
> HTML     + Json  + CSS    ->  Beautiful Business Documents
> Markdown + YAML  + SASS   ->  Beautiful Maintainable Business Document

Install

Install the dem command line using npm, locally:

npm install @enspirit/dem-bs

Or globally using the -g flag.

Examples

To get started, try:

dem --help
dem compile --help
dem print --help

Use the compile sub-command to generate an html document from markdown, css and json sources in specific files:

dem compile --html-template examples/index.html.tpl -s examples/index.css  -t examples/index.md -d examples/index.json

Otherwise, skip lengthy parameters by following doc-e-mate conventions: current folder having index.md (markdown text), index.css (style) and index.json (data) files, as well as an index.html.tpl html final template:

dem compile

Use the print sub-command to generate your document and convert it into a pdf document.

dem print

This command uses the WeasyPrint solution (see https://weasyprint.org/), so make sure that it is correctly installed on your machine (the weasyprint command must be available in a terminal).

By default, output files are named after the text source file. But you may explicitly choose the name of the produced (html or pdf depending on the sub-command) files by using the --output option.

dem compile -o my_document.html
dem print -o my_document.pdf

Also, edit your sources files and display the final result live by using the --watch option.

dem compile --watch
dem print --watch

Doc-e-mate will watch for modifications of any source file located in the directory of each specified (or default) source file, as well as their subdirectories. Now, let's edit your sources in your favorite editor on the left hand side of your screen, and get a live display of the final pdf document on the right hand side of your screen.

Eventually, generate multiple data instanciations of the same document by using the --publipost option and using an array of data instead of a single data object, and instantiate the name of the produced document too with the same mustache format as in the document.

dem print --publipost -d array_of_data_instances.json.yml -o my_report_{{id}}.pdf

Mustache partials

Doc-e-mate supports mustache partials. Please take a look at Mustache partials documentation first: https://mustache.github.io/mustache.5.html.

TL;DR: you may include text from some separated markdown file called white_hat.md and located using the following syntax in your main text file: {{> white_hat}}. In this case, white_hat.md is located in the same directory as your main text file.

Also do not hesitate to use several levels of inclusion: white_hat.md may refer to another markdown file called shield_of_light.md located in a subdirectory powers with the following: {{> powers/shield_of_light}}. Just make sure to always use a path relative to the main text file.

Build your data with javascript

Doc-e-mate supports data file written in CommonJS. They are loaded using the NodeJS require directive. The only requirement is to export the data with the following instruction: module.exports = data; at the end of the javascript data file. You may use an asynchronized script which returns a javascript promise, just do not forget the --async option then.

Check the examples directory of these repository for some javascript data examples.

Hacking

The dem command line is written in BuckleScript, wth great help from the following libraries:

• mustache.js, see https://mustache.github.io/
• markdown-it, see https://github.com/markdown-it/markdown-it and https://spec.commonmark.org/

Getting started with the source code

Clone the repository, then run the following command to initialize your dev environment:

npm install

On certain systems, It might be necessary to run npm install bs-platform first.

Building the tool

You can build the program with

npm run build

Running tests

You can run the tests using:

npm run test

Running dem in development mode

In development, instead of using the dem commandline itself, simply run the local version:

node src/cli.bs.js

Note: npm run build automatically prepends a node shebang #!/usr/bin/env node in the generated javascript command-line interface src/cli.bs.js. Executing it with node src/cli.bs.js might not work in some cases.

Note: You may also consider linking the binary using npm link in order to use the dem command, just as would do a user after installing the package. To undo this, use npm unlink.