𝓜𝓪𝓻𝓴𝓸

A markdown parser with high extensibility.

Marko is a markdown parser written in pure Python that complies CommonMark's spec v0.29. It is designed to be highly extensible, see Extend Marko for details.

Marko requires Python 3.6 or higher.

Why Marko

Among all implementations of Python's markdown parser, it is a common issue that user can't easily extend it to add his own features. Furthermore, Python-Markdown and mistune don't comply CommonMark's spec. It is a good reason for me to develop a new markdown parser.

Respecting that Marko complies CommonMark's spec at the same time, which is a super complicated spec, Marko's performance will be affected. However, using a parser which doesn't comply the CommonMark spec may give you unexpected rendered results from time to time. A benchmark result shows that Marko is 3 times slower than Python-Markdown, but a bit faster than Commonmark-py, much slower than mistune. If performance is a bigger concern to you than spec compliance, you'd better choose another parser.

Use Marko

The installation is very simple:

$ pip install marko

And to use it:

import marko

print(marko.convert(text))

Marko also provides a simple CLI, for example, to render a document and output to a html file:

$ cat my_article.md | marko > my_article.html

Extensions

It is super easy to use an extension:

from marko import Markdown
from marko.ext.footnote import Footnote
# Add footnote extension
markdown = Markdown(extensions=[Footnote])
# Or you can just:
markdown = Markdown(extensions=['footnote'])
# Alternatively you can register an extension later
markdown.use(Footnote)

An example of using an extension with the command-line version of Marko:

$ cat this_has_footnote.txt | marko -e footnote > hi_world.html

Marko is shipped with 4 extensions: 'footnote', 'toc' 'pangu', 'codehilite'. They are not included in CommonMark's spec but are common in other markdown parsers.

Marko also provides a Github flavored markdown parser which can be found at marko.ext.gfm.gfm.

Please refer to Extend Marko about how to write your own extension.

License

Marko is released under MIT License

Change Log