Extract dedicated code blocks from markdown files to "real" code files

Scan a Markdown file for code blocks prepended with a local file link and write the code block's content to the file defined in the link, the file / path of the link are created if not existing yet.

Basic use case is e.g. to validate code examples in a README.md, use them directly for automated tests and reuse them for demos, i.e. to avoid the effort and notorious errors with copy and paste of code and divergence of intentionally identical code at different places.

Also possible is e.g. extracting examples from the README.md of another project to reuse them in the current project or pushing examples of the current project to a centralized storage.

The basic idea and code is forked from the ingenious markdown-code-extractor (v1.4.0).

hh lohmann <[email protected]>

Synopsis

  import { markdownCodeExtract } from 'markdown-code-extract'

  [await] markdownCodeExtract()

  [await] markdownCodeExtract(mdFile)

  [await] markdownCodeExtract(mdFile,outputRoot)

  [await] markdownCodeExtract('examples.md')

  [await] markdownCodeExtract('../examples/js.md')

  [await] markdownCodeExtract('#','../examples/js.md')

Parameters

mdFile

Optional: Name / path of Markdown file to extract code blocks from

• Default: ./README.md
• Use placeholder # for 'use default' if you only want to specify other parameters

outputRoot

Optional: Path of an existing directory to write code files to

• Default: ./
• Use placeholder # for 'use default' if you only want to specify other parameters

logLevel

Optional: Log process details

• Possible values: 0 = no logging, 1 = some logging
• Default: 0
• Use placeholder # for 'use default' if you only want to specify other parameters

Returns

Promise

• Since markdownCodeExtract mainly acts as a batch with error throwing you may need only .catch but not await / .then

Demo

Dependencies

• npm packages:
  • is-binary-file-simple: Check with minimal effort if a file is binary, e.g. before trying to apply text file methods

Installation

Pick for your preferred package manager:

  npm i markdown-code-extract

  pnpm i markdown-code-extract

  bun i markdown-code-extract

  # For Yarn you should double check docs for your and / or
  # current Yarn version, newer versions do not treat `i package_name`
  # as an alias for `add ...` and exclude global installations
  yarn add markdown-code-extract

Source Code

• GitHub: https://github.com/hh-lohmann/markdown-code-extract

License

• MIT (see LICENSE.txt)

References

is-binary-file-simple

• https://hh-lohmann.github.io/is-binary-file-simple
• in npm registry: https://npmjs.com/package/is-binary-file-simple
• at npmx.dev: https://npmx.dev/package/is-binary-file-simple

markdown-code-extractor

• in npm registry: https://npmjs.com/package/markdown-code-extractor
• at npmx.dev: https://npmx.dev/package/markdown-code-extractor
• repo: https://github.com/chad-autry/markdown-code-extractor