README.md

markdown-webserver

This is a simple NodeJS application which can turn a directory structure with markdown files into a webserver.

Features

• Supports the full markdown specification
• If the served directory is a local GIT repository, the repo will be refreshed regularly.
• Basic search engine
• Navigation
• Custom 404 screen, copyright message etc.
• Customizing the look of the generated page is easy.
• Modular architecture, you can develop your own plugin

Installation

1. Download the latest release here.
2. Run npm install command in the downloaded and extracted directory.
3. You can start the server by npm start -- -p <path-to-root-directory> command.

The server will discover the given directory recursively, and will serve the found markdown files similiar to a wiki website on port 80.

Customization

• You can create a .markdown-webserver directory in the root directory. The server will recognize the following files in this directory:

  • COPYRIGHT.md - rendered at the bottom of the left menu
  • EMPTY.md - rendered if selected content is empty.
  • HOME.md - rendered if the requested path is localhost/
  • NOTFOUND.md - rendered if the selected content was not found.

• The layout of the application is declared in .mustache files in templates directory.

• The less files are in resources directory.

Working with GIT repositories

If your root directory is a GIT repository (has .git subdirectory), the server will regularly pull the contents of remote repository.

Plugins

The plugin API is under development, for further information check this wiki page

Other information

• The server use cache for the files, the cache timeout is 5 minutes.
• The next planned improvements are listed here. If you have another good idea, create an issue abot it!
• Feel free to use this code for any purpose, pull requests are also welcomed.