league/commonmark is a Markdown parser for PHP which supports the full CommonMark spec. It is based on the CommonMark JS reference implementation by John MacFarlane (@jgm).
- Fully support the CommonMark spec (100% compliance)
- Match the C and JavaScript implementations of CommonMark to make a logical and similar API
- Continuously improve performance without sacrificing quality or compliance
- Provide an extensible parser/renderer which users may customize as needed
This project can be installed via Composer:
$ composer require league/commonmark:^0.11See Versioning for important information on which version constraints you should use.
The CommonMarkConverter class provides a simple wrapper for converting CommonMark to HTML:
use League\CommonMark\CommonMarkConverter;
$converter = new CommonMarkConverter();
echo $converter->convertToHtml('# Hello World!');
// <h1>Hello World!</h1>The actual conversion process requires two steps:
- Parsing the Markdown input into an AST
- Rendering the AST document as HTML
Although the CommonMarkConverter wrapper simplifies this process for you, advanced users will likely want to do this themselves:
use League\CommonMark\DocParser;
use League\CommonMark\Environment;
use League\CommonMark\HtmlRenderer;
// Obtain a pre-configured Environment with all the CommonMark parsers/renderers ready-to-go
$environment = Environment::createCommonMarkEnvironment();
// Optional: Add your own parsers/renderers here, if desired
// For example: $environment->addInlineParser(new TwitterHandleParser());
// Create the document parser and HTML renderer engines
$parser = new DocParser($environment);
$htmlRenderer = new HtmlRenderer($environment);
// Here's our sample input
$markdown = '# Hello World!';
// 1. Parse the Markdown to AST
$documentAST = $parser->parse($markdown);
// Optional: If you want to access/modify the AST before rendering, do it here
// 2. Render the AST as HTML
echo $htmlRenderer->renderBlock($documentAST);
// The output should be:
// <h1>Hello World!</h1>This approach allows you to access/modify the AST before rendering it.
You can also add custom parsers/renderers by registering them with the Environment class.
The documentation provides several customization examples such as:
You can also reference the core CommonMark parsers/renderers as they use the same functionality available to you.
Documentation can be found at commonmark.thephpleague.com.
Custom parsers/renderers can be bundled into extensions which extend CommonMark. Here are some that you may find interesting:
- Markua - Markdown parser for PHP which intends to support the full Markua spec.
- CommonMark Table Extension - Adds the ability to create tables in CommonMark documents.
- CommonMark Attributes Extension - Adds a syntax to define attributes on the various HTML elements.
- Alt Three Emoji An emoji parser for CommonMark, that integrates with Laravel Markdown.
This project aims to fully support the entire CommonMark spec. Other flavors of Markdown may work but are not supported. Any/all changes made to the spec or JS reference implementation should eventually find their way back into this codebase.
The following table shows which versions of league/commonmark are compatible with which version of the CommonMark spec:
| league/commonmark | CommonMark spec |
|---|---|
| 0.11.x | 0.22 |
| 0.10.0 | 0.21 |
| 0.9.0 | 0.20 |
| 0.8.0 | 0.19 |
| 0.7.2 0.7.1 0.7.0 0.6.1 |
0.18 0.17 |
| 0.6.0 | 0.16 0.15 0.14 |
| 0.5.x 0.4.0 |
0.13 |
| 0.3.0 | 0.12 |
| 0.2.x | 0.10 |
| 0.1.x | 0.01 |
This package is not part of CommonMark, but rather a compatible derivative.
$ ./vendor/bin/phpunitThis will also test league/commonmark against the latest supported spec.
You can compare the performance of league/commonmark to other popular parsers by running the included benchmark tool:
$ ./tests/benchmark/benchmark.phpSemVer will be followed closely. 0.x versions will introduce breaking changes, so be careful which version constraints you use. It's highly recommended that you use Composer's caret operator to ensure compatiblity; for example: ^0.11. This is equivalent to >=0.11.0 <0.12.0.
If you're only using the CommonMarkConverter class to convert Markdown (no other class references, custom parsers, etc.), then it should be safe to use a broader constraint like ~0.11, >0.11, etc. I personally promise to never break this specific class in any future 0.x release.
While this package does work well, the underlying code should not be considered "stable" yet. The original spec and JS parser may undergo changes in the near future, which will result in corresponding changes to this code. Any methods tagged with @api are not expected to change, but other methods/classes might.
Major release 1.0.0 will be reserved for when both CommonMark and this project are considered stable (see outstanding CommonMark spec issues). 0.x.x will be used until that happens.
If you encounter a bug in the spec, please report it to the CommonMark project. Any resulting fix will eventually be implemented in this project as well.
For now, I'd like to maintain similar logic as the JS reference implementation until everything is stable. I'll gladly accept any contributions which:
- Mirror fixes made to the reference implementation
- Optimize existing methods or regular expressions
- Fix issues with adhering to the spec examples
Major refactoring should be avoided for now so that we can easily follow updates made to the reference implementation. This restriction will likely be lifted once the CommonMark specs and implementations are considered stable.
Please see CONTRIBUTING for additional details.
If you discover any security related issues, please email [email protected] instead of using the issue tracker.
This code is a port of the CommonMark JS reference implementation which is written, maintained and copyrighted by John MacFarlane. This project simply wouldn't exist without his work.
league/commonmark is licensed under the BSD-3 license. See the LICENSE file for more details.