frontmatter-md

Lightweight YAML frontmatter parser for Markdown files. The package extracts metadata written at the beginning of a Markdown file between --- delimiters and returns the remaining document content.

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Installation

npm install frontmatter-md

Node.js usage

Markdown

---
title: "Hello World"
description: Simple post showing supported data types
author: Sefinek
order: 3
rating: 4.5
draft: false
featured: true
tags: [markdown, frontmatter, parser]
categories:
  - JavaScript
  - Markdown
  - Tools
---

# Heading
The document content is returned separately, without the frontmatter block.

Example

const parseFrontmatter = require('frontmatter-md');

const { data, content } = parseFrontmatter(markdown);

Output

{
	"data": {
		"title": "Hello World",
		"description": "Simple post showing supported data types",
		"author": "Sefinek",
		"order": 3,
		"rating": 4.5,
		"draft": false,
		"featured": true,
		"tags": ["markdown", "frontmatter", "parser"],
		"categories": ["JavaScript", "Markdown", "Tools"]
	},
	"content": "# Heading\nThe document content is returned separately, without the frontmatter block."
}

Browser usage

URL

https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/frontmatter-md@1/dist/mdFrontmatter.min.js

Example

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/frontmatter-md@1/dist/mdFrontmatter.min.js"></script>
<script>
	const markdown = `---
title: Browser example
tags: [html, browser, markdown]
draft: false
---

# Browser example
Parsed directly in the browser.`;

	const { data, content } = mdFrontmatter(markdown);
	console.log(data);
	console.log(content);
</script>

Supported values

• strings, including quoted strings
• numbers
• true and false values
• YAML lists
• inline arrays, e.g. [foo, bar, baz]
• comments and empty lines inside the frontmatter block

API

const result = parseFrontmatter(markdown);

The function returns an object:

{
	data: {},   // Metadata from frontmatter
	content: '' // Markdown content without frontmatter
}

If the text does not contain valid frontmatter, data will be an empty object and content will remain unchanged.

Development

npm test
npm run lint
npm run build

MIT License

Copyright © 2026 Sefinek