Markdown and Razor

[ror3d]

I've read in the documentation that .md files are processed by Markdown and then Razor. I expected that this would mean I can use @ razor commands, like conditionals, or defining a @section. But it doesn't seem to work, I think Markdown is converting the @ to @, and also any { ... } into tag attributes.

Is there some way this can be done?

Thanks

[daveaglick]

I think Markdown is converting the @ to @

That's correct. The raw RenderMarkdown module has a toggle for this behavior, but in Statiq Web it's configured to HTML escape a single @ symbol since we know Razor will be run on the rendered Markdown afterwards. This is a little tricky because without that escaping we were getting all kinds of problem reports of folks not understanding why things like email addresses in their Markdown were triggering errors when processed by Razor.

The good news is that it's easy to un-escape the @ HTML escaping using \@ in your Markdown. I.e. \@DateTime.Now.ToString().

Let me know if you have any trouble with that.

[ror3d]

Hi, sorry, having more trouble with this stuff (although maybe there's some alternative to what I'm trying that I haven't found).

I was trying to use a @Document.GetString("name") inside a markdown, and the only way I got it to work was by using it inside a <div>@Document.GetString("name")</div>. Basically, if I try just the @ command, it fails because it encodes the " as `&quot" and then breaks because of that.

Also, a note on the "hack" of using it inside an html tag, it seems to work with <div>, but it does not work with <span> for example.

[daveaglick]

This is all sort of circling around the problem that Markdown->HTML->Razor->HTML is pretty tricky to get stuff to flow through correctly. Have you taken a look at shortcodes? That feature is designed to provide something like a universal templating mechanism that works directly in Markdown.

For example, to output the value of the "name" metadata, you write this inside the Markdown file:

<?!= Name /?>

The <?!= syntax is something I need to document better 😬. That might be more in line with what you're looking to do.

[ror3d]

Ah right! yes, that's exactly what I wanted! I looked into the shortcodes page looking to see if there was something like this but I didn't find it. Thank you!

[daveaglick]

I looked into the shortcodes page looking to see if there was something like this but I didn't find it

Because it's not there! That's on me - still trying to get everything that's in here documented after all these years working on it. I'm easily distracted.

[ror3d]

That's fine, good to know, and it stays here for reference while it's not added there I guess :) Thanks a lot for your work, even though there's some rough edges, this system is one of the best out there for what it does