Markdown to YAML

Specifically dealing with links in Markdown.

Here I convert:

• From Markdown - bullet points of links with titles
• To YAML - as an array of hashes/maps with title and link fields.

Then the value can be stored as data in my Dev Resources site.

How to run

The pattern works great in VS Code when doing Find and Replace, with Regex enabled. Especially as you can easily preview or undo.

But you could also set this up to work with a CLI tool like grep.

Convert

Pattern

Find:

(\s+)?- \[(.+)\]\((.+)\) ?(.+)?

Replace:

  $1- title: $2
  $1  url: $3
  $1  description: $4

Notes:

• You’ll still need to to be a bit of clean-up, but this pattern does most of the repetitive work for you.
• Optional
  • The 2 spaces at the start are optional, but are used to indent the output
  • The space, dash and space and text at the end are optional.
• Groups = The groups are captured with brackets and then used in the output using dollar sign substitution.
• Limitations
  • Any lines without links such as headings or quotes are not picked up, as the pattern becomes to complex (also one needs multi-line context to differniate between a bullet point as a heading or as comment under a point). But fortunately, those lines will remain unaffected and stay in the output, since we are replacing lines in existing content and not generating fresh output.

Samples

Input

- [ABC](https://abc.com)
- [DEF](https://def.com) with comment
- [GHI](https://ghi.com) - dash comment
- TypeScript
    - [Download](https://www.typescriptlang.org/download)
    - [TypeScript Cheatsheet](https://devhints.io/typescript) on DevHints.
- Docs
    - [Basic types](https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/basic-types.html)
    - [Interfaces](https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/interfaces.html) - type checking based on the _shape_ of the data.
        - [Extra level of indenting](https://example.com)

Output

- title: ABC
  url: https://abc.com
  description: 
- title: DEF
  url: https://def.com
  description: with comment
- title: GHI
  url: https://ghi.com
  description: - dash comment
- TypeScript
    - title: Download
      url: https://www.typescriptlang.org/download
      description: 
    - title: TypeScript Cheatsheet
      url: https://devhints.io/typescript
      description: on DevHints.
- Docs
    - title: Basic types
      url: https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/basic-types.html
      description: 
    - title: Interfaces
      url: https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/interfaces.html
      description: - type checking based on the _shape_ of the data.
        - title: Extra level of indenting
          url: https://example.com
          description: