A CLI tool that converts medium posts (html) into Jekyll/Hugo compatible markdown files. Also downloads images and adds yaml front matter to the converted markdown files. It works with exported Medium posts (local html files) and converts them to markdown using a single command. It can be useful in scenarios when you want to migrate your blog away from Medium to Jekyll or Hugo (or something similar that supports markdown content).
- Export and extract your Medium posts from your Medium account.
- Go to
https://medium.com/me/settings/security
and click onDownload your information
. Click theexport
button. This will allow you to download amedium-export.zip
archive containing all your Medium content. - Extract the .zip archive downloaded in the previous step. It will have a sub-directory called
posts
. - Copy the path of this
posts
directory.
- Go to
- Install
node.js
andmedium-2-md
on your system.- Download and Install node.js - https://nodejs.org/en/download/.
- Install medium-2-md -
npm i -g medium-2-md
.
- Run the following command to convert all your Medium posts (html) to markdown files,
medium-2-md convertLocal '<path of the posts directory>' -dfi
That's it. The output markdown files will be stored in a sub-directory called md_<a big number>
in the input posts directory itself. (By the way, that big number is coming from the Date.now() JavaScript function, added to differentiate multiple output folders.)
The converted markdown files include front matter containing title, description, published date and canonical URL of the original Medium post/story. The images from the Medium posts are downloaded in a sub-directory called img
inside the output directory.
The convertLocal
command supports the following optional flags,
-f
or--frontMatter
: Add the front matter on top of the markdown files.-i
or--images
: Download images to a localimg
sub-directory.-t
or--timeout
: Set the timeout for downloading images. Default is 100ms.-op
or--path
: Custom path for saving markdown files.-ip
or--img-path
: Custom path for downloading images.-d
or--drafts
: Convert the drafts too.
medium-2-md convertLocal '/home/user/Desktop/posts' -fi
medium-2-md convertLocal '/home/user/Desktop/posts' -dfi
medium-2-md convertLocal '/home/user/Desktop/posts' -dfi --path '/home/user/Desktop/md' --img-path '/home/user/Downloads/img'
Note: The flags do not support any defaults. You need to add them in order to get the respective results (drafts, images and/or front matter inclusion).
When using the -op
or the --path
flag, the output markdown files are written to this path instead of the default value. If this custom path is invalid or does not exist, the output files are written to the default path.
When using the -i
or --images
with the --img-path
flag, the images are downloaded into the directory at this custom path. If this directory does not already exist, the images are downloaded to the default path. The image elements in the converted markdown files link to their respective local paths.
This package uses:
- turndown - to convert html into markdown.
- cheerio - to select and extract relevant html attributes from Medium posts' html files.
- commander - to enable command line interface.
- js-yaml - to add yaml front matter to markdown files.
- node-fetch - to download images.