DocFlow CLI

A command-line interface for DocFlow - transform documents between formats with table support.

Features

• 📄 Convert documents between DOCX, Markdown, HTML, JSON, and plain text
• 📊 Preserve tables when converting DOCX to Markdown
• 🔍 Query document structure using CSS-like selectors
• ✨ Transform content with uppercase, lowercase, titlecase, and sentencecase
• 📋 Extract plain text without formatting
• 🔗 Pipe from stdin for shell scripting integration

Installation

Global Installation (Recommended)

npm install -g @paulmeller/docflow-cli
docflow --help

Using npx (No Installation)

npx @paulmeller/docflow-cli convert -i document.docx -o document.md

Local Development

git clone <repo>
npm install
npm run build
node dist/cli.js --help

Global Options

• -v, --verbose - Output the SuperDoc JSON structure after conversions (useful for debugging)
• -V, --version - Display CLI version
• -h, --help - Display help information

Verbose Mode Example

# See the internal JSON structure after conversion
docflow --verbose convert -i document.docx -o output.md

# Output includes the SuperDoc JSON representation
# Useful for debugging and understanding document structure

Commands

convert

Convert documents between formats. Auto-detects format from file extensions.

# DOCX to Markdown (preserves tables!)
docflow convert -i report.docx -o report.md

# Markdown to DOCX
docflow convert -i README.md -o README.docx

# DOCX to HTML
docflow convert -i document.docx -o document.html

# Specify output format explicitly
docflow convert -i input.docx -o output.txt -f text

Options:

• -i, --input <file> - Input file path (required)
• -o, --output <file> - Output file path (required)
• -f, --format <format> - Output format: docx, markdown, html, json, text (optional)

convert-stdin

Convert content from stdin to a document. Perfect for piping and shell scripting.

# Pipe markdown to DOCX
echo "# Hello World" | docflow convert-stdin -o output.docx

# Convert text file to DOCX
cat README.md | docflow convert-stdin -o README.docx

# Generate HTML from markdown
echo "## Title\n\nContent" | docflow convert-stdin -o page.html -f html

Options:

• -o, --output <file> - Output file path (required)
• -f, --format <format> - Output format: docx, markdown, html, json, text (default: docx)

query

Query document structure using CSS-like selectors.

# Find all headings
docflow query -i document.docx -s "heading"

# Find level 2 headings only
docflow query -i document.docx -s "heading[level=2]"

# Count paragraphs
docflow query -i document.docx -s "paragraph" --count

# Extract heading text
docflow query -i document.docx -s "heading[level=1]" --text

Options:

• -i, --input <file> - Input file path (required)
• -s, --selector <selector> - CSS-like selector (required)
• -c, --count - Show count only
• -t, --text - Show text content only

transform

Transform document content using text transformations.

# Convert all H1 headings to uppercase
docflow transform -i input.docx -o output.docx -s "heading[level=1]" -t uppercase

# Convert paragraphs to lowercase
docflow transform -i input.docx -o output.docx -s "paragraph" -t lowercase

# Apply title case to H2 headings
docflow transform -i input.docx -o output.docx -s "heading[level=2]" -t titlecase

# Apply sentence case
docflow transform -i input.docx -o output.docx -s "heading" -t sentencecase

Options:

• -i, --input <file> - Input file path (required)
• -o, --output <file> - Output file path (required)
• -s, --selector <selector> - CSS-like selector (required)
• -t, --type <type> - Transform type: uppercase, lowercase, titlecase, sentencecase (required)

info

Display document structure and table of contents.

docflow info -i document.docx

Output example:

Document Structure:
==================
Total Headings: 15
  - H1: 3
  - H2: 8
  - H3: 4
Total Paragraphs: 42

Table of Contents:
==================
- Introduction
  - Overview
  - Getting Started
- Features
  - Core Features
  - Advanced Features

Options:

• -i, --input <file> - Input file path (required)

extract-text

Extract plain text from a document without any formatting.

# Print to console
docflow extract-text -i document.docx

# Save to file
docflow extract-text -i document.docx -o output.txt

Options:

• -i, --input <file> - Input file path (required)
• -o, --output <file> - Output text file (optional, prints to console if not specified)

Use Cases

Shell Scripting

# Convert all DOCX files to Markdown
for file in *.docx; do
  docflow convert -i "$file" -o "${file%.docx}.md"
done

# Generate report from template
cat report_template.md | docflow convert-stdin -o monthly_report.docx

Document Analysis

# Count headings in a document
docflow query -i document.docx -s "heading" --count

# Extract all H1 headings
docflow query -i document.docx -s "heading[level=1]" --text

# Get document structure
docflow info -i document.docx

Batch Transformations

# Standardize heading case across multiple files
for file in *.docx; do
  docflow transform -i "$file" -o "processed_$file" -s "heading[level=1]" -t titlecase
done

Supported Formats

| Format | Extension | Read | Write | |--------|-----------|------|-------| | Microsoft Word | .docx | ✅ | ✅ | | Markdown | .md | ✅ | ✅ | | HTML | .html | ✅ | ✅ | | JSON | .json | ✅ | ✅ | | Plain Text | .txt | ✅ | ✅ |

Table Support

DocFlow CLI preserves tables when converting DOCX to Markdown:

DOCX Table: | Name | Age | City | |------|-----|------| | John | 25 | NYC | | Jane | 30 | LA |

Converts to Markdown:

| Name | Age | City |
|------|-----|------|
| John | 25  | NYC  |
| Jane | 30  | LA   |

Requirements

• Node.js 18+ or higher

License

ISC

Related Projects

• DocFlow - The underlying document transformation library
• SuperDoc - Document processing engine

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome!