Introduction

Meziantou.Framework.HtmlToMarkdown converts HTML to Markdown: headings, paragraphs, emphasis, links, images, lists, task lists, block quotes, code, tables and definition lists. Use it to import web pages or rich text into a Markdown documentation, a wiki or a chat message. Meziantou.Framework.HtmlToMarkdown.Tool does the same from the command line.

What you can do with it

• Convert a fragment with one call: HtmlToMarkdown.Convert(html). See Getting started.
• Know what each element becomes: blocks, inline elements, code blocks, tables, task lists and definition lists. See Converted elements.
• Choose the Markdown style: ATX or Setext headings, * or _ emphasis, fenced or indented code blocks, the list marker, the line breaks, smart punctuation and emoji shortcodes. See Formatting options.
• Decide what happens to the other elements, and convert HTML from untrusted sources. See Unknown elements and untrusted HTML.
• Render the result with Meziantou.Framework.Markdown. See Rendering the Markdown.
• Convert files from the command line. See Command-line tool.

How it works

HtmlToMarkdown.Convert parses the HTML with the HTML parser of Meziantou.Framework.WebPlatform, as a browser does: invalid markup, missing end tags and entities are handled the same way. It then walks the tree and writes the Markdown of each element. The text is escaped, so that a * or a # of the HTML stays a character and does not start Markdown syntax.

The output follows CommonMark, and uses the common extensions for what CommonMark does not have: pipe tables, task lists, strikethrough and definition lists.

HtmlToMarkdown and its options are in the Meziantou.Framework namespace.

Next steps

• Getting started: install the package and convert your first fragment.
• Converted elements: the Markdown each element produces.
• Limitations: what the conversion does not keep.