Using the Markdown plugin

Overview

JSDoc includes a Markdown plugin that automatically converts Markdown-formatted text to HTML. You can use this plugin with any JSDoc template. In JSDoc 3.2.2 and later, the Markdown plugin uses the marked Markdown parser.

Note: When you enable the Markdown plugin, be sure to include a leading asterisk on each line of your JSDoc comments. If you omit the leading asterisks, JSDoc's parser may remove asterisks that are used for Markdown formatting.

By default, JSDoc looks for Markdown-formatted text in the following JSDoc tags:

@author
@classdesc
@description (including untagged descriptions at the start of a JSDoc comment)
@param
@property
@returns
@see
@throws

Enabling the Markdown plugin

To enable the Markdown plugin, add the string plugins/markdown to the plugins array in your JSDoc configuration file:

JSON configuration file that enables the Markdown plugin

{
    "plugins": ["plugins/markdown"]
}

Converting Markdown in additional JSDoc tags

By default, the Markdown plugin only processes specific JSDoc tags for Markdown text. You can handle Markdown text in other tags by adding a markdown.tags property to your JSDoc configuration file. The markdown.tags property contains an array of the additional doclet properties that can contain Markdown text. (In most cases, the name of the doclet property is the same as the tag name. However, some tags are stored differently; for example, the @param tag is stored in a doclet's params property. If you're not sure how a tag's text is stored in a doclet, run JSDoc with the -X/--explain tag, which prints each doclet to the console.)

For example, if the foo and bar tags accept values that are stored in a doclet's foo and bar properties, you could enable Markdown processing of these tags by adding the following settings to your JSDoc configuration file:

Converting Markdown in 'foo' and 'bar' tags

{
    "plugins": ["plugins/markdown"],
    "markdown": {
        "tags": ["foo", "bar"]
    }
}

Excluding the default tags from Markdown processing

To prevent the Markdown plugin from processing any of the default JSDoc tags, add a markdown.excludeTags property to your JSDoc configuration file. The markdown.excludeTags property contains an array of the default tags that should not be processed for Markdown text.

For example, to exclude the author tag from Markdown processing:

Excluding the 'author' tag from Markdown processing

{
    "plugins": ["plugins/markdown"],
    "markdown": {
        "excludeTags": ["author"]
    }
}

Hard-wrapping text at line breaks

By default, the Markdown plugin does not hard-wrap text at line breaks. This is because it's normal for a JSDoc comment to be wrapped across multiple lines. If you prefer to hard-wrap text at line breaks, set your JSDoc configuration file's markdown.hardwrap property to true. This property is available in JSDoc 3.4.0 and later.

Adding ID attributes to headings

By default, the Markdown plugin does not add an id attribute to each HTML heading. To automatically add id attributes based on the heading's text, set your JSDoc configuration file's markdown.idInHeadings property to true. This property is available in JSDoc 3.4.0 and later.