Nizel
Nizel is a Markdown content processor for modern applications.
It turns Markdown into structured content your app can use: rendered output, frontmatter, table of contents, headings, links, images, plain text, excerpts, reading time, and an AST.
import { useNizel } from 'nizel';
const nizel = useNizel();
const { result, html, meta, toc } = await nizel(`
---
title: Hello World
description: My first Nizel page
---
# {{ meta.title }}
Welcome to **Nizel**.
`);Why Nizel exists
Most Markdown parsers answer one question:
How do I turn Markdown into HTML?
Nizel answers a more useful application-level question:
How do I turn Markdown into structured content my app can use?
Markdown in real products usually needs more than HTML. It needs metadata, frontmatter, slugs, anchors, TOC generation, custom blocks, design-system classes, safe links, variables, filters, and plugin-based extension points.
Nizel should provide those things as one predictable pipeline.
Core API
const nizel = useNizel(options);
const data = await nizel(markdown, runtimeOptions);The main result object:
const {
result,
html,
text,
meta,
frontmatter,
toc,
title,
description,
excerpt,
headings,
links,
images,
readingTime,
ast,
} = await nizel(markdown);result is the selected main output. By default it is the HTML output.
Built-in formatting
Nizel should include formatting and case filters out of the box using the existing Sil packages:
@sil/format@sil/case
Example:
---
title: "{{ product.name | title }}"
slug: "{{ product.name | kebab }}"
---
# {{ meta.title }}
Price: {{ price | format('currency', 'EUR') }}
Date: {{ publishedAt | format('date', 'dd MMM yyyy') }}Main features
- Markdown to HTML
- Frontmatter extraction
- Typed metadata
- Template variables
- Built-in filters from
@sil/formatand@sil/case - Table of contents generation
- Heading anchors and slugs
- Plain-text extraction
- Excerpt generation
- Reading-time calculation
- Link and image extraction
- Element customization
- Custom classes and attributes
- Element replacement
- Custom blocks
- Inline extensions
- AST transforms
- Plugin system
- Safe output defaults
- Presets for blog, docs, email, and minimal usage
Documentation
- Full reference
- Getting started
- API
- Result object
- Template variables and filters
- Built-in filters
- Frontmatter
- Table of contents
- Elements
- Blocks
- Inline extensions
- Transforms
- Plugins
- Plugin packages
- Presets
- Pipeline
- Safety
- Testing
- Implementation plan
Design principle
Nizel should not be a low-level Markdown parser with a nicer name.
It should be a content engine with Markdown as its input format.
The parser is an implementation detail. The public value is the stable content model and the simple API.