Markdown Preview — Developer Code Samples

Convert Markdown to HTML programmatically using popular parsing libraries. Python's mistune and markdown libraries, JavaScript's marked.js, and pandoc handle Markdown rendering for documentation generators, blog engines, and static site tools.

Try the interactive version online: Open Markdown Preview Tool →

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
markdown_text	str	Yes	Markdown-formatted string to convert to HTML
extensions	list	No	Markdown extensions to enable (e.g., tables, fenced_code)
safe_mode	bool	No	Escape HTML in input to prevent XSS (default: True)

Returns: HTML string with rendered Markdown content

Code Examples

# Install: pip install mistune

# Using mistune (fast, pure Python)
import mistune

markdown_text = """
# Hello World

This is a **bold** paragraph with *italic* text.

## Code Example

```python
def hello():
    print("Hello, World!")
```

- Item one
- Item two
- Item three

[Visit ToolPilot](https://toolpilot.dev)
"""

# Simple HTML output
html = mistune.html(markdown_text)
print(html)

# With custom renderer options
from mistune import create_markdown
md = create_markdown(escape=False, plugins=['strikethrough', 'table'])
html = md(markdown_text)

# Using Python's built-in markdown module
import markdown

md = markdown.Markdown(extensions=['tables', 'fenced_code', 'codehilite'])
html = md.convert(markdown_text)
print(html)

# Extract plain text from Markdown
import re
def md_to_text(md_string):
    html = mistune.html(md_string)
    # Remove HTML tags
    clean = re.sub(r'<[^>]+>', '', html)
    return clean.strip()

// Install: npm install marked

// Using marked (npm install marked)
const { marked } = require('marked');

const markdownText = `
# Hello World

This is a **bold** paragraph with *italic* text.

## Code Example

\\`\\`\\`javascript
function hello() {
  console.log('Hello, World!');
}
\\`\\`\\`

- Item one
- Item two

[Visit ToolPilot](https://toolpilot.dev)
`;

// Basic conversion
const html = marked.parse(markdownText);
console.log(html);

// Custom options
marked.setOptions({
  breaks: true,        // Convert \n to <br>
  gfm: true,          // GitHub-flavored Markdown
  headerIds: true,    // Add id attrs to headers
});

// Synchronous parsing
const result = marked.parse('**bold** and *italic*');
console.log(result);
// Output: <p><strong>bold</strong> and <em>italic</em></p>

// Browser: render directly to DOM
// document.getElementById('output').innerHTML = marked.parse(markdownText);

# Convert Markdown to HTML with pandoc
pandoc README.md -o output.html

# Full standalone HTML document
pandoc README.md -s -o output.html

# Convert to PDF via LaTeX
pandoc README.md -o output.pdf

# With Python (install mistune or markdown first)
pip install mistune
python3 -c "import mistune, sys; print(mistune.html(sys.stdin.read()))" < README.md

# Using node and marked
npm install -g marked
marked README.md > output.html

# Preview in terminal with glow (brew install glow)
glow README.md

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