MarkdownIt External Anchor

Mark external, absolute links with appropriate rel & target attributes

• Prevents XSS attacks & provides good UX
• Does not affect HTML within markdown

Usage

Install

$ npm install --save markdown-it markdown-it-external-anchor

Example

import md from 'markdown-it';
import pluginExternalAnchor from 'markdown-it-external-anchor';

md.use(pluginExternalAnchor, {
    domain: 'example.net',
    class: 'external'
});

md.render('[text](https://example.com)'); // => <a href="https://example/com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">text</a>

Options

• domain (default: null) - A domain which is considered an internal link.
  • When domain is provided, localhost is implicit.
• class (default: null) - a class name

Maintenance

This is just a personal project. I do not consider it "released". That said, I'm open to suggestions and contributions.

Legal

All source-code is provided under the terms of the MIT license.

Copyright 2025 Binyamin Aron Green.