WikiLinks

Summary

The WikiLinks extension adds support for WikiLinks. Specifically, any [[bracketed]] word is converted to a link.

This extension is included in the standard Markdown library.

Syntax

A [[bracketed]] word is any combination of upper or lower case letters, number, dashes, underscores and spaces surrounded by double brackets. Therefore

[[Bracketed]]

would produce the following HTML:

<a href="/Bracketed/" class="wikilink">Bracketed</a>

Note that WikiLinks are automatically assigned class="wikilink" making it easy to style WikiLinks differently from other links on a page if one so desires. See below for ways to alter the class.

Also note that when a space is used, the space is converted to an underscore in the link but left as-is in the label. Perhaps an example would illustrate this best:

[[Wiki Link]]

becomes

<a href="/Wiki_Link/" class="wikilink">Wiki Link</a>

Usage

See Extensions for general extension usage. Use wikilinks as the name of the extension.

See the Library Reference for information about configuring extensions.

The default behavior is to point each link to the document root of the current domain and close with a trailing slash. Additionally, each link is assigned to the HTML class wikilink.

The following options are provided to change the default behavior:

  • base_url: String to append to beginning of URL.

    Default: '/'

  • end_url: String to append to end of URL.

    Default: '/'

  • html_class: CSS class. Leave blank for none.

    Default: 'wikilink'

  • build_url: Callable which formats the URL from its parts.

A trivial example:

markdown.markdown(some_text, extensions=['wikilinks'])

Examples

For an example, let us suppose links should always point to the sub-directory /wiki/ and end with .html

>>> from markdown.extensions.wikilinks import WikiLinkExtension
>>> html = markdown.markdown(text,
...     extensions=[WikiLinkExtension(base_url='/wiki/', end_url='.html')]
... )

The above would result in the following link for [[WikiLink]].

<a href="/wiki/WikiLink.html" class="wikilink">WikiLink</a>

If you want to do more that just alter the base and/or end of the URL, you could also pass in a callable which must accept three arguments (label, base, and end). The callable must return the URL in it’s entirety.

>>> def my_url_builder(label, base, end):
...    # do stuff
...    return url
...
>>> html = markdown.markdown(text,
...     extensions=[WikiLinkExtension(build_url=my_url_builder)],
... )

The option is also provided to change or remove the class attribute.

>>> html = markdown.markdown(text,
...     extensions=[WikiLinkExtension(html_class='myclass')]
... )

Would cause all WikiLinks to be assigned to the class myclass.

<a href="/WikiLink/" class="myclass">WikiLink</a>

Using with Meta-Data extension

The WikiLink extension also supports the Meta-Data extension. Please see the documentation for that extension for specifics. The supported meta-data keywords are:

  • wiki_base_url
  • wiki_end_url
  • wiki_html_class

When used, the meta-data will override the settings provided through the extension_configs interface.

This document:

wiki_base_url: http://example.com/
wiki_end_url:  .html
wiki_html_class:

A [[WikiLink]] in the first paragraph.

would result in the following output (notice the blank wiki_html_class):

<p>A <a href="http://example.com/WikiLink.html">WikiLink</a> in the first paragraph.</p>