How to Use Mistune¶
Mistune is super easy to use. Here is how you can convert Markdown formatted text into HTML:
import mistune
mistune.html(YOUR_MARKDOWN_TEXT)
The .html()
methods has enabled all the features you might want
by default:
No escape of HTML tags
With strikethrough plugin
With table plugin
With footnote plugin
Customize Mistune¶
Mistune provides a function to create Markdown instance easily:
import mistune
markdown = mistune.create_markdown()
This method will create a “escaped” Markdown instance without any plugins, which means:
markdown('<div>hello</div>')
# ==>
'<p><div>hello</div></p>'
Non escaped version:
markdown = mistune.create_markdown(escape=False)
markdown('<div>hello</div>')
# ==>
'<div>hello</div>'
Adding plugins:
markdown = mistune.create_markdown()
markdown('~~s~~')
# ==>
'<p>~~s~~</p>'
markdown = mistune.create_markdown(plugins=['strikethrough'])
markdown('~~s~~')
# ==>
'<p><del>s</del></p>'
Find out what plugins mistune has built-in in Built-in Plugins sections.
Customize Renderer¶
Mistune supports renderer feature which enables developers to customize the output. For instance, to add code syntax highlight:
import mistune
from pygments import highlight
from pygments.lexers import get_lexer_by_name
from pygments.formatters import html
class HighlightRenderer(mistune.HTMLRenderer):
def block_code(self, code, info=None):
if info:
lexer = get_lexer_by_name(info, stripall=True)
formatter = html.HtmlFormatter()
return highlight(code, lexer, formatter)
return '<pre><code>' + mistune.escape(code) + '</code></pre>'
markdown = mistune.create_markdown(renderer=HighlightRenderer())
print(markdown('```python\nassert 1 == 1\n```'))
In this way, we can use Pygments to highlight the fenced code. Learn more at Renderers.
AST¶
Mistune can produce AST by default without any renderer:
markdown = mistune.create_markdown(renderer=None)
This markdown
function will generate a list of tokens instead of HTML:
text = 'hello **world**'
markdown(text)
# ==>
[
{
'type': 'paragraph',
'children': [
{'type': 'text', 'raw': 'hello '},
{'type': 'strong', 'children': [{'type': 'text', 'raw': 'world'}]}
]
}
]
It is also possible to pass renderer='ast'
to create the markdown instance:
markdown = mistune.create_markdown(renderer='ast')