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Quickstart

To quickstart with Showdown, install it as a package (for server-side) or include it to your browser (client-side) via CDN:

Installation

Server-side

npm install showdown

bower install showdown

PM> Install-Package showdownjs

More information about the package you can find on the NuGet website.

Client-side

https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/showdown@<version>/dist/showdown.min.js

Showndown page on jsDelivr

https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/showdown/<version>/showdown.min.js

Showndown page on cdnjs

https://unpkg.com/showdown/dist/showdown.min.js

Showndown page on unpkg

Replace <version> with an actual full length version you're interested in. For example, 2.0.3.

Usage

Once installed, you can use Showndown according to the chosen method:

Server-side

Node.js

var showdown  = require('showdown'),
    converter = new showdown.Converter(),
    text      = '# hello, markdown!',
    html      = converter.makeHtml(text);

<h1 id="hellomarkdown">hello, markdown!</h1>

Client-side

Browser

var converter = new showdown.Converter(),
    text      = '# hello, markdown!',
    html      = converter.makeHtml(text);

<h1 id="hellomarkdown">hello, markdown!</h1>

Potential XSS vulnerabilities

Showdown doesn't sanitize the input since Markdown relies on it to parse certain features correctly into HTML. As a result, this may lead to potential XSS injection vulnerabilities.

Please refer to the Markdown's XSS vulnerability page for more information.

Other installation methods

Tarball

You can download the latest tarball directly from releases.

Previous versions

If you're looking for Showdown prior to version 1.0.0, you can find them in the legacy branch.

Changelog

The full changelog is available here.