kramdown Parser

Introduction

This is the main parser of the kramdown library (as the name suggests). It parses text in kramdown syntax which is based on Markdown, a very easy to write, easy to read markup for writing HTML documents in plain text. Since the basic Markdown syntax has some shortcomings, implementations (especially the PHP Markdown Extra package) have tried to overcome this shortcomings with additional syntax. The kramdown parser supports all features of the original Markdown syntax (albeit with some minor corrections) as well as newer features implemented in the PHP Markdown Extra package and Maruku.

For a complete description of the implemented syntax, have a look at the syntax page, the quick reference provides a short overview.

HTML parsing

The kramdown parser uses the HTML parser for parsing HTML tags. However, HTML tags are not converted to a native element representation by default, in contrast to the HTML parser. You need to set the option html_to_native to true to achieve this.

Options

The kramdown parser supports the following options:

parse_block_html

Process kramdown syntax in block HTML tags

If this option is true, the kramdown parser processes the content of block HTML tags as text containing block-level elements. Since this is not wanted normally, the default is false. It is normally better to selectively enable kramdown processing via the markdown attribute.

Default: false
Used by: kramdown parser

parse_span_html

Process kramdown syntax in span HTML tags

If this option is true, the kramdown parser processes the content of span HTML tags as text containing span-level elements.

Default: true
Used by: kramdown parser

html_to_native

Convert HTML elements to native elements

If this option is true, the parser converts HTML elements to native elements. For example, when parsing <em>hallo</em> the emphasis tag would normally be converted to an :html element with tag type :em. If html_to_native is true, then the emphasis would be converted to a native :em element.

This is useful for converters that cannot deal with HTML elements.

Default: false
Used by: kramdown parser