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MarkMaker

Programatically generate markdown documents.

Intended Use

The mark_maker gem provides a set of methods that take text content and convert it to various markdown elements. The primary use case is simple conversion of something like a JSON document into a markdown document.

The initial development goal is to provide support for all of the markdown supported operations, at least in their basic form. What I mean by basic is that you provide a 'chunk' of content and the mark_maker Generator will return that content in the corresponding markdown format. For grouped content, variable parameters will be provided on the method call to allow for things like correctly numbered bullet lists. Each call to the generator is treated as a separate markdown operation. So things like link definitions aren't going to be supported, at least not in 1.0

Speaking of versioning, I'll use semantic versioning to indicate when new markdown capabilities are added. I'll release 1.0 when I feel like it supports set of markdown capabilites that fulfill the intended use. This will also include some extended capabilities from expanded syntaxes like GitHub flavored markdown. Methods generating non-core markdown will be noted in the documentation for that method.

If all goes well, and it appears anyone is using this gem, then a 2.0 release is envisioned that will add a Document class that will provide a more holistic layer of capabilities. For example, the aformentioned reference style links would be nice. As would the ability to have an arbitrarily long string broken down into nicely formatted hard break paragraphs. Same goes for nicely indented multi-line bullets, etc.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'mark_maker'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install mark_maker

Usage

MarkMaker provides line oriented conversion of content to markdown elements. It currently supports first, second and third level headings, links, bullets, numbered bullets, emphasis, strong, code and basic table markdown. See bin/generate_readme.rb for the code used to generate this document and a sample of all these markdown generators in action.

Simple markdown generation is handled by extensions to the ruby String class. Headers, code, emphasis, and strong are all handled by String methods.

Multi line and more complex conversions are handled by a Generator class.

Header Example

The following ruby code ...

  h = "Let It Begin"
  puts h.header1
  puts h.header2
  puts h.header3
  puts h.header4
  puts h.header5
  puts h.header6

Results in this generated markdown ...

Let It Begin
============
Let It Begin
------------
### Let It Begin
#### Let It Begin
##### Let It Begin
###### Let It Begin

Ultimately looking something like this (if your are viewing this on github or through some other markdown viewing method) ...

Let It Begin

Bulleted List Example

list_content = ['gold', 'silver', 'bronze']
gen.bullets(*list_content)

Produces

 - gold
 - silver
 - bronze

Or a numbered list with...

gen.numbers(*list_content)

Produces

 1. gold
 2. silver
 3. bronze

Code Examples

Standard markdown code blocks and code span are supported, as well as github flavored markdown fenced code blocks.

some_code = [ "# add it up",
              "total = [1, 2, 3, 4].inject do |sum, i|",
              "  sum += i",
              "end",
              "",
              "puts total" ]
gen.code_block(*some_code)

Produces

    # add it up
    total = [1, 2, 3, 4].inject do |sum, i|
      sum += i
    end

    puts total

You can also generate a github flavored markdown fenced code version.

gen.fenced_code_block(*some_code)

Produces

```
# add it up
total = [1, 2, 3, 4].inject do |sum, i|
  sum += i
end

puts total
```

You can also include a language in a fenced code block.

gen.fenced_code_language('ruby', *some_code)

Produces

```ruby
# add it up
total = [1, 2, 3, 4].inject do |sum, i|
  sum += i
end

puts total
```

Rendering beautifully highlighted code like so, if you are viewing this on github.

# add it up
total = [1, 2, 3, 4].inject do |sum, i|
  sum += i
end

puts total

Table Example

  header, separator = gen.table_header("Col One", "Col Two", "Col Three")
  puts header
  puts separator
  puts gen.table_row("First", "A", "$3.99")
  puts gen.table_row("Second", "BC", "$14.00")
  puts gen.table_row("Third", "DEFGH", "$1,034.50")

Produces this terribly ugly markdown (but standby, there is a better way below) ...

|Col One|Col Two|Col Three|
|-------|-------|---------|
|First|A|$3.99|
|Second|BC|$14.00|
|Third|DEFGH|$1,034.50|

Or, you can pass all the rows in at once like so ...

  table_data = [
    ["Col One", "Col Two", "Col Three"],
    [":-", ":-:", "-:"],
    ["First", "A", "$3.99"],
    ["Second", "BC", "$14.00"],
    ["Third", "DEFGH", "$1,034.50"]
  ]
  puts gen.table(*table_data)

And get nicely justified markdown like this ...

|Col One|Col Two|Col Three|
|:------|:-----:|--------:|
|First  |   A   |    $3.99|
|Second |  BC   |   $14.00|
|Third  | DEFGH |$1,034.50|

Which gives you this stunning HTML table ...

Col One	Col Two	Col Three
First	A	$3.99
Second	BC	$14.00
Third	DEFGH	$1,034.50

Block Quotes Example

content = "If you want to quote, you'll get a quote.\nWarning, it will just quote line by line, not break it up nicely.\n"
puts gen.block_quote(*content.lines)

Produces the markdown ...

> If you want to quote, you'll get a quote.
> Warning, it will just quote line by line, not break it up nicely.

Which looks like this when viewed as HTML...

If you want to quote, you'll get a quote. Warning, it will just quote line by line, not break it up nicely.

Contributing

Fork it
Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
Create a new Pull Request

About This README

This readme document is created using MarkMaker. To modify it, edit the code in bin/generate_readme.rb and then run the 'readme' rake task to generate and overwrite the existing README.md

vi bin/generate_readme.rb
rake readme

I'm calling this Extreme Readme Driven Development. It's kind of like Inception ;)

Supported Ruby Versions

The following ruby versions are explicitly supported (see .travis.yml)

2.3.0
2.2.4
1.9.3
ruby-head

Release Process

Document release changes in CHANGELOG.md

Increment the VERSION number in lib/mark_maker/version.rb

Run rake release which will:

build the gem into the pkg/ director
create a git tag for the version
push to github
push the packaged gem to rubygems