Render Markdown with Blade and Embed Dynamic Syntax

#laravel #blade #composer #commonmark

Originally published at recca0120.github.io

The Idea

Writing documentation in Markdown is convenient. It would be even better if you could embed Blade syntax (like @include or variables) inside the Markdown files. Laravel's Blade engine supports custom file extensions, so you can have it process .md files as well.

Implementation

Install a Markdown Package

Install league/commonmark:

composer require league/commonmark

Controller

The example below uses league/commonmark v2 (v1 has a different API):

use Illuminate\View\Factory;
use League\CommonMark\GithubFlavoredMarkdownConverter;

class DocsController extends Controller
{
    private $viewFactory;

    public function __construct(Factory $viewFactory)
    {
        $this->viewFactory = $viewFactory;
        // Let .md files be processed by the Blade engine
        $this->viewFactory->addExtension('md', 'blade');
    }

    public function index() {
        $converter = new GithubFlavoredMarkdownConverter([
            'allow_unsafe_links' => false,
        ]);

        // First compile through Blade, then convert to HTML
        return $converter->convert($this->viewFactory->make('demo.md'));
    }
}