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Marked Documentation

The parse function

import { marked } from 'marked';
marked.parse(markdownString [,options] [,callback])
Argument Type Notes
markdownString string String of markdown source to be compiled.
options object Hash of options. Can also use marked.setOptions.
callback function Called when markdownString has been parsed. Can be used as second argument if no options present.

Alternative using reference

// Create reference instance
import { marked } from 'marked';

// Set options
// `highlight` example uses https://highlightjs.org
marked.setOptions({
  renderer: new marked.Renderer(),
  highlight: function(code, lang) {
    const hljs = require('highlight.js');
    const language = hljs.getLanguage(lang) ? lang : 'plaintext';
    return hljs.highlight(code, { language }).value;
  },
  langPrefix: 'hljs language-', // highlight.js css expects a top-level 'hljs' class.
  pedantic: false,
  gfm: true,
  breaks: false,
  sanitize: false,
  smartLists: true,
  smartypants: false,
  xhtml: false
});

// Compile
console.log(marked.parse(markdownString));

Options

Member Type Default Since Notes
baseUrl string null 0.3.9 A prefix url for any relative link.
breaks boolean false v0.2.7 If true, add <br> on a single line break (copies GitHub behavior on comments, but not on rendered markdown files). Requires gfm be true.
gfm boolean true v0.2.1 If true, use approved GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM) specification.
headerIds boolean true v0.4.0 If true, include an id attribute when emitting headings (h1, h2, h3, etc).
headerPrefix string '' v0.3.0 A string to prefix the id attribute when emitting headings (h1, h2, h3, etc).
highlight function null v0.3.0 A function to highlight code blocks, see Asynchronous highlighting.
langPrefix string 'language-' v0.3.0 A string to prefix the className in a <code> block. Useful for syntax highlighting.
mangle boolean true v0.3.4 If true, autolinked email address is escaped with HTML character references.
pedantic boolean false v0.2.1 If true, conform to the original markdown.pl as much as possible. Don't fix original markdown bugs or behavior. Turns off and overrides gfm.
renderer object new Renderer() v0.3.0 An object containing functions to render tokens to HTML. See extensibility for more details.
sanitize boolean false v0.2.1 If true, sanitize the HTML passed into markdownString with the sanitizer function.
Warning: This feature is deprecated and it should NOT be used as it cannot be considered secure.
Instead use a sanitize library, like DOMPurify (recommended), sanitize-html or insane on the output HTML!
sanitizer function null v0.3.4 A function to sanitize the HTML passed into markdownString.
silent boolean false v0.2.7 If true, the parser does not throw any exception.
smartLists boolean false v0.2.8 If true, use smarter list behavior than those found in markdown.pl.
smartypants boolean false v0.2.9 If true, use "smart" typographic punctuation for things like quotes and dashes.
tokenizer object new Tokenizer() v1.0.0 An object containing functions to create tokens from markdown. See extensibility for more details.
walkTokens function null v1.1.0 A function which is called for every token. See extensibility for more details.
xhtml boolean false v0.3.2 If true, emit self-closing HTML tags for void elements (<br/>, <img/>, etc.) with a "/" as required by XHTML.

Inline Markdown

You can parse inline markdown by running markdown through marked.parseInline.

const blockHtml = marked.parse('**strong** _em_');
console.log(blockHtml); // '<p><strong>strong</strong> <em>em</em></p>'

const inlineHtml = marked.parseInline('**strong** _em_');
console.log(inlineHtml); // '<strong>strong</strong> <em>em</em>'

Asynchronous highlighting

Unlike highlight.js the pygmentize.js library uses asynchronous highlighting. This example demonstrates that marked is agnostic when it comes to the highlighter you use.

marked.setOptions({
  highlight: function(code, lang, callback) {
    require('pygmentize-bundled') ({ lang: lang, format: 'html' }, code, function (err, result) {
      callback(err, result.toString());
    });
  }
});

marked.parse(markdownString, (err, html) => {
  console.log(html);
});

In both examples, code is a string representing the section of code to pass to the highlighter. In this example, lang is a string informing the highlighter what programming language to use for the code and callback is the function the asynchronous highlighter will call once complete.

Workers

To prevent ReDoS attacks you can run marked on a worker and terminate it when parsing takes longer than usual.

Marked can be run in a worker thread on a node server, or a web worker in a browser.

Node Worker Thread

// markedWorker.js

import { marked } from 'marked';
import { parentPort } from 'worker_threads';

parentPort.on('message', (markdownString) => {
  parentPort.postMessage(marked.parse(markdownString));
});
// index.js

import { Worker } from 'worker_threads';
const markedWorker = new Worker('./markedWorker.js');

const markedTimeout = setTimeout(() => {
  markedWorker.terminate();
  throw new Error('Marked took too long!');
}, timeoutLimit);

markedWorker.on('message', (html) => {
  clearTimeout(markedTimeout);
  console.log(html);
  markedWorker.terminate();
});

markedWorker.postMessage(markdownString);

Web Worker

NOTE: Web Workers send the payload from postMessage in an object with the payload in a .data property

// markedWorker.js

importScripts('path/to/marked.min.js');

onmessage = (e) => {
  const markdownString = e.data
  postMessage(marked.parse(markdownString));
};
// script.js

const markedWorker = new Worker('./markedWorker.js');

const markedTimeout = setTimeout(() => {
  markedWorker.terminate();
  throw new Error('Marked took too long!');
}, timeoutLimit);

markedWorker.onmessage = (e) => {
  clearTimeout(markedTimeout);
  const html = e.data;
  console.log(html);
  markedWorker.terminate();
};

markedWorker.postMessage(markdownString);