building a basic markdown editor: unified, trees and data

• unified

  14 4,244 7.2 JavaScript

  ☔️ interface for parsing, inspecting, transforming, and serializing content through syntax trees

  

To build the Markdown editor (and the preview, mostly), I decided to use unified, an ecosystem of tools allowing the developer to parse a format into an abstract tree and back into another format (for example, markdown to html) and modify said tree (for example, to add specific classes to certain html elements before they are converted to an actual html string. The basics of how to do so can be found in this article, but they mostly consist of:

• Highlight.js

  83 23,051 8.7 JavaScript

  JavaScript syntax highlighter with language auto-detection and zero dependencies.

  

The real magic is what happens once you generate the syntax trees; at that point, you can modify them with the existing plugins (or make you own, if you really want to). For instance, I use a plugin to add specific css classes to certain elements so they integrate better with the visual design of the website another to add code highlighting with highlight.js and some others for generating a js object from the frontmatter of a Markdown file and to add support for Github flavored Markdown. I could do a lot more with these, like add support for videos, embeds and more, but for now this is enough for a simple preview.

• SurveyJS

  surveyjs.io sponsored

  Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App. With SurveyJS form UI libraries, you can build and style forms in a fully-integrated drag & drop form builder, render them in your JS app, and store form submission data in any backend, inc. PHP, ASP.NET Core, and Node.js.

  

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