Installation and usage

Installing

Install with CommonMark support:

pip install mdformat

Install with GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM) support:

pip install mdformat-gfm

Note that GitHub’s Markdown renderer supports syntax extensions not included in the GFM specification. For full GitHub support do:

pip install mdformat-gfm mdformat-frontmatter mdformat-footnote

Install with Markedly Structured Text (MyST) support:

pip install mdformat-myst

Warning

The formatting style produced by mdformat may change in each version. It is recommended to pin mdformat dependency version.

Command line usage

Format files

Format files README.md and CHANGELOG.md in place

mdformat README.md CHANGELOG.md

Format .md files in current working directory recursively

mdformat .

Read Markdown from standard input until EOF. Write formatted Markdown to standard output.

mdformat -

Check formatting

mdformat --check README.md CHANGELOG.md

This will not apply any changes to the files. If a file is not properly formatted, the exit code will be non-zero.

Options

foo@bar:~$ mdformat --help
usage: mdformat [-h] [--check] [--version] [--number] [--wrap {keep,no,INTEGER}] [--end-of-line {lf,crlf,keep}] [paths ...]

CommonMark compliant Markdown formatter

positional arguments:
  paths                 files to format

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --check               do not apply changes to files
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  --number              apply consecutive numbering to ordered lists
  --wrap {keep,no,INTEGER}
                        paragraph word wrap mode (default: keep)
  --end-of-line {lf,crlf,keep}
                        output file line ending mode (default: lf)

Python API usage

Format text

import mdformat

unformatted = "\n\n# A header\n\n"
formatted = mdformat.text(unformatted)
assert formatted == "# A header\n"

Format a file

Format file README.md in place:

import mdformat

# Input filepath as a string...
mdformat.file("README.md")

# ...or a pathlib.Path object
import pathlib

filepath = pathlib.Path("README.md")
mdformat.file(filepath)

Options

All formatting style modifying options available in the CLI are also available in the Python API, with equivalent option names:

import mdformat

mdformat.file(
    "FILENAME.md",
    options={
        "number": True,  # switch on consecutive numbering of ordered lists
        "wrap": 60,  # set word wrap width to 60 characters
    }
)

Usage as a pre-commit hook

mdformat can be used as a pre-commit hook. Add the following to your project’s .pre-commit-config.yaml to enable this:

- repo: https://github.com/executablebooks/mdformat
  rev: 0.7.17  # Use the ref you want to point at
  hooks:
  - id: mdformat
    # Optionally add plugins
    additional_dependencies:
    - mdformat-gfm
    - mdformat-black