remark-breaks

remark plugin to support hard breaks without needing spaces or escapes (turns enters into <br>s).

Contents

• What is this?
• When should I use this?
• Install
• Use
• API
  • unified().use(remarkBreaks)
• Syntax
• Syntax tree
• Types
• Compatibility
• Security
• Related
• Contribute
• License

What is this?

This package is a unified (remark) plugin to turn soft line endings (enters) into hard breaks (<br>s)

unified is a project that transforms content with abstract syntax trees (ASTs). remark adds support for markdown to unified. mdast is the markdown AST that remark uses. This is a remark plugin that transforms mdast.

When should I use this?

This plugin is useful if you want to display user content closer to how it was authored, because when a user includes a line ending, it’ll show as such. GitHub does this in a few places (comments, issues, PRs, and releases), but it’s not semantic according to HTML and not compliant to markdown. Markdown already has two ways to include hard breaks, namely trailing spaces and escapes (note that ␠ represents a normal space):

lorem␠␠
ipsum

lorem\
ipsum

Both will turn into <br>s. If you control who authors content or can document how markdown works, it’s recommended to use escapes instead.

Install

This package is ESM only. In Node.js (version 12.20+, 14.14+, or 16.0+), install with npm:

npm install remark-breaks

In Deno with esm.sh:

import remarkBreaks from 'https://esm.sh/remark-breaks@3'

In browsers with esm.sh:

<script type="module">
  import remarkBreaks from 'https://esm.sh/remark-breaks@3?bundle'
</script>

Use

Say we have the following file, example.md (note: there are no spaces after a):

This is a
paragraph.

And our module, example.js, looks as follows:

import {read} from 'to-vfile'
import {unified} from 'unified'
import remarkParse from 'remark-parse'
import remarkBreaks from 'remark-breaks'
import remarkRehype from 'remark-rehype'
import rehypeStringify from 'rehype-stringify'

main()

async function main() {
  const file = await unified()
    .use(remarkParse)
    .use(remarkBreaks)
    .use(remarkRehype)
    .use(rehypeStringify)
    .process(await read('example.md'))

  console.log(String(file))
}

Now, running node example yields:

<p>This is a<br>
paragraph.</p>

Without remark-breaks, you’d get:

<p>This is a
paragraph.</p>

API

This package exports no identifiers. The default export is remarkBreaks.

unified().use(remarkBreaks)

Support hard breaks without needing spaces or escapes (turns enters into <br>s). There are no options.

Syntax

This plugin looks for markdown line endings (\r, \n, and \r\n) preceded by zero or more spaces and tabs.

Syntax tree

This plugin adds mdast Break nodes to the syntax tree. These are the same nodes that represent breaks with spaces or escapes.

Types

This package is fully typed with TypeScript. There are no extra exported types.

Compatibility

Projects maintained by the unified collective are compatible with all maintained versions of Node.js. As of now, that is Node.js 12.20+, 14.14+, and 16.0+. Our projects sometimes work with older versions, but this is not guaranteed.

This plugin works with unified version 6+ and remark version 7+.

Security

Use of remark-breaks does not involve rehype (hast) or user content so there are no openings for cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.

Related

• remark-gfm — support GFM (autolink literals, footnotes, strikethrough, tables, tasklists)
• remark-github — link references to commits, issues, and users, in the same way that GitHub does
• remark-directive — support directives
• remark-frontmatter — support frontmatter (YAML, TOML, and more)
• remark-math — support math

Contribute

See contributing.md in remarkjs/.github for ways to get started. See support.md for ways to get help.

This project has a code of conduct. By interacting with this repository, organization, or community you agree to abide by its terms.

License

MIT © Titus Wormer