Markdown Component Loader

Turn Markdown into dynamic, stateless React components

• Integrate documentation and other prose with user info and context
• Show your real UI components alongside documentation
• Add other dynamic components inside documentation

Usage

Installation

yarn add markdown-component-loader

or

npm install --save markdown-component-loader

You'll need both Babel and Webpack in order to use it.

Webpack Configuration

You then need to configure Webpack to use the loader, in your webpack.config.js;

module.exports = {
  module: {
    loaders: {
      {
        test: /\.mdx$/i,
        loader: 'babel-loader!markdown-component-loader'
      }
      {...more}
    }
  },
  {...more}
};

Usage and Syntax

mdx allows you interleave both React props and React components within your prose and code snippets! mdx files may optionally start with yaml-formatted frontmatter. imports specified will be included in the React component's definition.

Here's an example of an mdx file; ```markdown

imports: '{ name, version }': ./package.json

This is a Markdown Component file. Here you can include JSX-style assignment expressions; this component was generated using version {{ version }} of {{ name }}!

Props passed to this component are available as props, so you can embed those too! Hello there, {{ props.who || 'world' }}!

Another cool thing you can do is use JSX directly - here’s an SVG element, used inline: {{ <svg style={{ display: 'inline', height: '1em' }} viewBox="0 0 304 290"> }}.

_**Note**: destructuring imports must be quoted, but others need not be._

The above `mdx` file will produce the following module within Webpack;

```javascript
// Module generated from markdown by markdown-component-loader v0.0.2
import React from 'react';
import { name, version } from './package.json';

function MarkdownComponent(props) {
  const {className, style, elementProps} = props;

  return (
    <div className={className} style={style}>
      <p {...elementProps['p']}>This is a <em {...elementProps['em']}>Markdown Component</em> file. Here you can include JSX-style assignment expressions; this component was generated using version { version } of { name }!</p>
      <p {...elementProps['p']}>Props passed to this component are available as <code {...elementProps['code']}>props</code>, so you can embed those too! Hello there, { props.who || 'world' }!</p>
      <p {...elementProps['p']}>Another cool thing you can do is use JSX <strong {...elementProps['strong']}>directly</strong> - here’s an SVG element, used inline: { <svg {...elementProps['svg']} style={{ display: 'inline', height: '1em' }} viewBox="0 0 304 290"><path {...elementProps['path']} fill="none" stroke="currentColor" strokeWidth="16" d="M2,111 h300 l-242.7,176.3 92.7,-285.3 92.7,285.3 z" /></svg> }.</p>
    </div>
  );
};

MarkdownComponent.propTypes = {
  className: React.PropTypes.string,
  style: React.PropTypes.object,
  elementProps: React.PropTypes.object
};

MarkdownComponent.defaultProps = {
  elementProps: {}
};

export default MarkdownComponent;

You can then include it anywhere you like in your own React code;

import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';

import Readme from './readme.mdx';

ReactDOM.render(
  <Readme who="you" />,
  document.getElementById('main')
);

Styling and Interaction

There are several mechanisms available for interacting with and styling generated components. This component is intended to be used with Basscss modular CSS, but could be styled globally as well.

Container Styling

The container will have supplied className and style props passed through to it.

Inner Element Styling

Elements within the Markdown Component can be styled on a per-element-name basis. All generated standard elements (read: elements which are known to React.DOM) have elementProps['name'] spread onto them (where name is the tag name of the element). You can specify any prop you want here, and that prop will be applied to all elements of that tag name.

For example, if you wanted to get a callback from each level-1 heading instance, you could use the component like this;

<SomeMarkdownComponent
  elementProps={{
    h1: {
      onClick: (evt) => /* do something */
    }
  }}
/>

This also facilitates the Basscss style, allowing, for instance, styling of anchor tags like so;

<SomeMarkdownComponent
  elementProps={{
    a: {
      className: 'blue hover-navy text-decoration-none hover-underline'
    }
  }}
/>

Prior Art

react-markdown-loader by Javier Cubides allows use of React components within fenced code blocks (albeit not assignment expressions), and gave me the idea to use yaml front-matter for imports. Thanks! 😁