Convert HTML back to Markdown for editing in wmd

Question

I am curious to do what happens when you edit a post on this site.

I am using wmd for my markdown editor, of course when I goto edit, I get the HTML it generated not the markdown like on stackoverflow. Now, is there a way I can store both? or is it reliable enough to simply convert the HTML back to markdown to show in the wmd editor?

Thanks!

Novak

Answer 1

Look at the optionsExample.html in your WMD distribution. There's an option to send the result to the server as Markdown.

Albertson

Actually, I have seen how to get one or the other, but then I need to convert it to HTML everytime I display it. IS that they best way to go? Either way I think I am in the same boat. Seems more efficent to convert it back only when editing. – Novak

You can convert to HTML on the server end, and store both HTML and Markdown in your database. That's how Stack Overflow does it, I believe. – Albertson

To avoid lots of repeat sanitisations, I believe that SO also sanitises the HTML'd version before storing that in the DB. (I believe there is a SO blog entry that mentions this, but don't quote me on it.) – Albertson

This is the javascritp you need to add before you load wmd.js: wmd_options = { output: "Markdown" }; – Rinaldo

@SamSelikoff Correct, but it actually has a server-side Markdown implementation to create the HTML with. It does not accept client-generated HTML willy-nilly. (Oh wait, I already said all this in my comments from 4.5 years ago. ;-)) – Albertson

Answer 2

If you want to convert HTML to Markdown in batch, I can recommend Aaron Swartz’s html2text.py Python script with which you can just:

cat my.html | python html2text.py # outputs markdown

Edit 05/11/12: Nowadays I use Pandoc which is like a swiss-knife for text documents. Can convert html<>textile<>markdown<>epub<>pdf<>latex, etc.

Feline

Aaron's page also has a form to convert any URL to markdown. Very handy! – Revelation

Second using Pandoc. Just used it now, and it's terrific! – Amphiarthrosis

Answer 3

As Chris notes, you can send Markdown to the server so you can store it there as such. I started trying to use MarkdownJ to convert on the server-side, but it doesn't (at the time of this writing) convert images to HTML correctly and so I ended up going with Java 6 Scripting: Rhino engine + showdown.js. Since WMD uses showdown.js you get the same Markdown-to-HTML transformation. Works like a charm (for Java 6, anyway).

Melaniemelanin

Answer 4

I have just know Markdownify (formerly html2text.php) that "writes texts in Markdown and save them in HTML. You won’t need a copy of the original Markdown input, since Markdownify can convert the saved HTML back to Markdown. And because page impressions are far more often than write actions, this gives you a simple way to increase your page’s performance. Another benefit for a CMS or similar software is that now only one format of text is saved — HTML. The user can now choose wether to write texts in plain HTML or use a full fledged Wysiwyg editor. And of course he can write in Markdown!"

Telpherage

Your online demo appears to be broken. – Poor

Answer 5

Open source html to markdown converters written in JavaScript:

• domchristie/to-markdown

  MarkItDown: retro-convert rich text to Markdown. Online Try.

• bambax/MarkItDown

  An HTML to Markdown converter written in JavaScript. Online Try.

Stebbins