--- title: The Tale of Markdownify published: true description: The behaviour of markdownify filter. tags: markdown, hugo, jekyll, markdownify --- While I was playing around with [Hugo](https://gohugo.io) and [Jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com/), I found out that their [`markdownify`](https://gohugo.io/functions/markdownify/) filter is somewhat confusing. To describe the problem, first I want to show you how Jekyll's `markdownify` filter works. Assume you have defined `my_text` parameter, for example inside `_config.yml` file: ```yml my_text: consectetur **adipiscing** [elit](https://www.example.com) ``` As you can see, this variable is a string in a [markdown](https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/) format. Now, let's try to use that variable inside a template file. ```liquid

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, {{ site.my_text | markdownify }}

``` Now, if you try to generate an HTML from this template using Jekyll, you will get something like this: ```html

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,

consectetur adipiscing elit

``` Although this is probably not what we wanted, because the content of our variable is wrapped with `

` tag. It is totally predictable behaviour because markdown always wraps its content with block elements. But in Hugo, the behaviour is less predictable: ```liquid

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, {{ .Site.Params.my_text | markdownify }}

``` Results in: ```html

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit

``` This is actually what we wanted, but wait. What if our variable had two paragraphs? ```yml params: my_text: |- first paragraph second paragraph ``` Now we get this: ```html

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,

first paragraph

second paragraph

``` Wait... but I thought Hugo was stripping these `

` tags. Well, not if you have more than one paragraph. But what if I really wanted to wrap a paragraph with `

`? According to [this](https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/pull/3786) thread, you should use `blocks` filter. But in my opinion, it is better to have some kind of `inline` parameter to strip out `

` tags rather than stripping them by default and making `markdownify` filter to behave incorrectly. Even if that means that we won't always get what we want. Standards are above us all :) And what about Jekyll? Well, although there were some attempts (see [this issue](https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll/issues/3571) and [this pull request](https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll/pull/5509)) to provide an `inline` parameter to the `markdownify` filter, they didn't succeed. And I didn't find any nice way to markdownify that variable without making it being wrapped with `

` tag. The only solution I found is just to set the variable to raw HTML and use it without `markdownify`. I think the real problem here is that [markdown syntax](https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax) does not define any standard way to create inline content, that wouldn't be wrapped with a block level elements such as `

`. But if we had something like: ```markdown This will be wrapped placed inside paragraph !!!But this **will not**!!! ``` That would produce: ```html

This will be wrapped with paragraph

But this will not ``` Then it would make our lives much better. Live long and prosper 🖖

smnh

The Tale of Markdownify

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