Markdown to create pages and table of contents?

Question

I started to use markdown to take notes.

I use marked to view my markdown notes and its beautiful.

But as my notes get longer I find it difficult to find what I want.

I know markdown can create tables, but is it able to create table of contents, that jumps to sections, or define page sections in markdown?

Alternatively, are there markdown readers/editors that could do such things. Search would be good feature to have too.

In short, I want to make it my awesome note taking tool and functions much like writing a book etc.

user_2343088 · Answer

Anchor tags generated by different Markdown parsers are not even.

If you are working with Markdown parsers GFM (GitHub Flavored Markdown) or Redcarpet, I wrote a Vim plugin to handle table of contents.

Features

Generate table of contents for Markdown files.

Supported Markdown parsers:
- GFM (GitHub Flavored Markdown)
- Redcarpet
Update existing table of contents.
Auto update existing table of contents on save.

Screenshots

vim-markdown-toc

Usage

Generate table of contents

Move the cursor to the line you want to append table of contents, then type a command below suit you. The command will generate headings after the cursor into table of contents.

:GenTocGFM

Generate table of contents in GFM link style.

This command is suitable for Markdown files in GitHub repositories, like README.md, and Markdown files for GitBook.
:GenTocRedcarpet

Generate table of contents in Redcarpet link style.

This command is suitable for Jekyll or anywhere else use Redcarpet as its Markdown parser.

You can view here to know differences between GFM and Redcarpet style toc links.

Update existing table of contents manually

Generally you don't need to do this, existing table of contents will auto update on save by default. If you want do it manually, just use :UpdateToc command.

Downloads and documents

https://github.com/mzlogin/vim-markdown-toc

user_1270008 · Answer

As mentioned in other answers, there are multiple ways to generate a table of contents automatically. Most are open source software and can be adapted to your needs.

What I was missing is, however, a visually attractive formatting for a table of contents, using the limited options that Markdown provides. We came up with the following:

Code

## Content

**[1. Markdown](#heading--1)**

  * [1.1. Markdown formatting cheatsheet](#heading--1-1)
  * [1.2. Markdown formatting details](#heading--1-2)

**[2. BBCode formatting](#heading--2)**

  * [2.1. Basic text formatting](#heading--2-1)

      * [2.1.1. Not so basic text formatting](#heading--2-1-1)

  * [2.2. Lists, Images, Code](#heading--2-2)
  * [2.3. Special features](#heading--2-3)

----

Inside your document, you would place the target subpart markers like this:


### 1.1. Markdown formatting cheatsheet

Depending on where and how you use Markdown, the following should also work, and provides nicer-looking Markdown code:

### 1.1. Markdown formatting cheatsheet

Example rendering

Content

1. Markdown

1.1. Markdown formatting cheatsheet

1.2. Markdown formatting details

2. BBCode formatting

2.1. Basic text formatting

2.1.1. Not so basic text formatting

2.2. Lists, Images, Code

2.3. Special features

Advantages

You can add as many levels of chapters and sub-chapters as you need. In the Table of Contents, these would appear as nested unordered lists on deeper levels.
No use of ordered lists. These would create an indentation, would not link the number, and cannot be used to create decimal classification numbering like "1.1.".
No use of lists for the first level. Here, using an unordered list is possible, but not necessary: the indentation and bullet just add visual clutter and no function here, so we don't use a list for the first ToC level at all.
Visual emphasis on the first-level sections in the table of content by bold print.
Short, meaningful subpart markers that look "beautiful" in the browser's URL bar such as #heading--1-1 rather than markers containing transformed pieces of the actual heading.
The code uses H2 headings (## …) for sections, H3 headings (### …) for sub-headings etc.. This makes the source code easier to read because ## … provides a stronger visual clue when scrolling through compared to the case where sections would start with H1 headings (# …). It is still logically consistent as you use the H1 heading for the document title itself.
Finally, we add a nice horizontal rule to separate the table of contents from the actual content.

For more about this technique and how we use it inside the forum software Discourse, see here.

user_903840 · Answer

On Gitlab, markdown supports this : [[_TOC_]]

user_334569 · Answer

In Visual Studio Code (VSCode) you can use the extension Markdown All in One.

Once installed, follow the steps below:

Press CTRL+SHIFT+P
Select Markdown: Create Table of Contents

EDIT: nowadays I use DocToc to generate the table of contents, see my other answer for details.

user_16049096 · Answer

As an alternative to hand-made link lists, let's give an overview of all available out-of-the-box solutions to insert a table of contents (please comment and extend to keep this up-to-date):

With Gollum v5, markdown supports this:


[[_TOC_]]

This works in Azure DevOps wiki, too.

Since Gitlab switched from Redcarpet to Kramdown as markdown engine, they now support the following syntax

- TOC
{:toc}

see https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/markdown-guide/#table-of-contents-toc

MultiMarkdown as of 4.7 has a the following macro:

{{TOC}}

according to Jannik's answer:
If your Markdown file is to be displayed in a repo on bitbucket.org, you can use the following at the location where you want your table of contents (more info here):

[TOC]

according to Paul Jurczak's aswer:
The Markdown editor Typora also generates a Table of Contents when you write [TOC] in your document.

I am aware, that I'm a little late with this answer. However, I missed such an overview myself. And my Edit of Nicolas Thery's answer to extend it to an overview was rejected.

user_219153 · Answer

Typora generates Table of Content by adding [TOC] to your document.

user_4561887 · Answer

If using the Sublime Text editor, the MarkdownTOC plugin works beautifully! See:

Once installed, go to Preferences --> Package Settings --> MarkdownTOC --> Settings -- User, to customize your settings. Here are the options you can choose: https://github.com/naokazuterada/MarkdownTOC#configuration.

I recommend the following:

{
  "defaults": {
    "autoanchor": true,
    "autolink": true,
    "bracket": "round",
    "levels": [1,2,3,4,5,6],
    "indent": "\t",
    "remove_image": true,
    "link_prefix": "",
    "bullets": ["-"],
    "lowercase": "only_ascii",
    "style": "ordered",
    "uri_encoding": true,
    "markdown_preview": ""
  },
  "id_replacements": [
    {
      "pattern": "\s+",
      "replacement": "-"
    },
    {
      "pattern": "<|>|&|'|"|<|>|&|'|"|!|#|$|&|'|$|$|\*|\+|,|/|:|;|=|\?|@|$$|$$|`|\"|\.|\\|<|>|{|}|™|®|©|%",
      "replacement": ""
    }
  ],
  "logging": false
}

To insert a table of contents, simply click at the top of the document where you'd like to insert the table of contents, then go to Tools --> Markdown TOC --> Insert TOC.

It will insert something like this:



1. [Helpful Links:](#helpful-links)
1. [Sublime Text Settings:](#sublime-text-settings)
1. [Packages to install](#packages-to-install)

Note the HTML comments it inserts for you. These are special markers that help the program know where the ToC is so that it can automatically update it for you every time you save! So, leave these intact.

To get extra fancy, add some

and

HTML tags around it to make the ToC collapsible/expandable, like this:


Table of Contents (click to open)


1. [Helpful Links:](#helpful-links)
1. [Sublime Text Settings:](#sublime-text-settings)
1. [Packages to install](#packages-to-install)

Now, you get this super cool effect, as shown below. See it in action in my main eRCaGuy_dotfiles readme here, or in my Sublime_Text_editor readme here.

For extra information about its usage and limitations, be sure to read my notes about the MarkdownTOC plugin in that readme too.

user_326516 · Answer

Just use your text editor with a plugin.

Your editor quite possibly has a package/plugin to handle this for you. For example, in Emacs, you can install markdown-toc TOC generator. Then as you edit, just repeatedly call M-x markdown-toc-generate-or-refresh-toc. That's worth a key binding if you want to do it often. It's good at generating a simple TOC without polluting your doc with HTML anchors.

Other editors have similar plugins, so the popular list is something like:

user_1849577 · Answer

I am not sure, what is the official documentation for markdown. Cross-Reference can be written just in brackets [Heading], or with empty brackets [Heading][].

Both works using pandoc. So I created a quick bash script, that will replace $__TOC__ in md file with its TOC. (You will need envsubst, that might not be part of your distro)

#!/bin/bash
filename=$1
__TOC__=$(grep "^##" $filename | sed -e 's/ /1. /;s/^##//;s/#/   /g;s/\. $.*$$/. [\1][]/')
export __TOC__
envsubst '$__TOC__' < $filename

user_1372202 · Answer

If your Markdown file is to be displayed in a repo on bitbucket.org, you should add [TOC] at the location where you want your table of contents. It will then be auto-generated. More info here:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/add-a-table-of-contents-to-a-wiki-221451163.html

user_3323419 · Answer

Here is a simple bash script to generate Table of Contents. Requires no special dependencies, but bash.

https://github.com/Lirt/markdown-toc-bash

It handles well special symbols inside of headings, markdown links in headings and ignores code blocks.

user_3787051 · Answer

There is a Ruby script called mdtoc.rb that can auto-generate a GFM Markdown Table of Contents, and it is similar but slightly different to some other scripts posted here.

Given an input Markdown file like:

# Lorem Ipsum

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, mei alienum adipiscing te, has no possit delicata. Te nominavi suavitate sed, quis alia cum no, has an malis dictas explicari. At mel nonumes eloquentiam, eos ea dicat nullam. Sed eirmod gubergren scripserit ne, mei timeam nonumes te. Qui ut tale sonet consul, vix integre oportere an. Duis ullum at ius.

## Et cum

Et cum affert dolorem habemus. Sale malis at mel. Te pri copiosae hendrerit. Cu nec agam iracundia necessitatibus, tibique corpora adipisci qui cu. Et vix causae consetetur deterruisset, ius ea inermis quaerendum.

### His ut

His ut feugait consectetuer, id mollis nominati has, in usu insolens tractatos. Nemore viderer torquatos qui ei, corpora adipiscing ex nec. Debet vivendum ne nec, ipsum zril choro ex sed. Doming probatus euripidis vim cu, habeo apeirian et nec. Ludus pertinacia an pro, in accusam menandri reformidans nam, sed in tantas semper impedit.

### Doctus voluptua

Doctus voluptua his eu, cu ius mazim invidunt incorrupte. Ad maiorum sensibus mea. Eius posse sonet no vim, te paulo postulant salutatus ius, augue persequeris eum cu. Pro omnesque salutandi evertitur ea, an mea fugit gloriatur. Pro ne menandri intellegam, in vis clita recusabo sensibus. Usu atqui scaevola an.

## Id scripta

Id scripta alterum pri, nam audiam labitur reprehendunt at. No alia putent est. Eos diam bonorum oportere ad. Sit ad admodum constituto, vide democritum id eum. Ex singulis laboramus vis, ius no minim libris deleniti, euismod sadipscing vix id.

It generates this table of contents:

$ mdtoc.rb FILE.md 
#### Table of contents

1. [Et cum](#et-cum)
    * [His ut](#his-ut)
    * [Doctus voluptua](#doctus-voluptua)
2. [Id scripta](#id-scripta)

Title

Heading 1

Sub-Title

Heading 2

Sub-Sub-Title

Heading 3

Sub-Sub-Sub-Title

Heading 4

user_334569 · Answer

You can use DocToc to generate the table of contents from command line with:

doctoc /path/to/file

To make links compatible with anchors generated by Bitbucket, run it with the --bitbucket argument.

user_3827487 · Answer

Use toc.py which is a tiny python script which generates a table-of-contents for your markdown.

Usage:

In your Markdown file add where you want the table of contents to be placed.
$python toc.py README.md (Use your markdown filename instead of README.md)

Cheers!

user_1420881 · Answer

I have used https://github.com/ekalinin/github-markdown-toc which provides a command line utility that auto-generates the table of contents from a markdown document.

No plugins, or macros or other dependencies. After installing the utility, just paste the output of the utility to the location in the document where you want your table of contents. Very simple to use.

$ cat README.md | ./gh-md-toc -

user_5117146 · Answer

Just add the number of slide ! it work with markdown ioslides and revealjs presentation

## Table of Contents

 1. [introduction](#3)
 2. [section one](#5)

user_7435940 · Answer

Here is a short PHP code I use to generate the TOC, and enrich any headings with anchor:

$toc = []; //initialize the toc to an empty array
$markdown = "... your mardown content here...";

$markdown = preg_replace_callback("/(#+)\s*([^
]+)/",function($matches) use (&$toc){
    static $section = [];
    $h = strlen($matches[1]);

    @$section[$h-1]++;
    $i = $h;
    while(isset($section[$i])) unset($section[$i++]);

    $anchor = preg_replace('/\s+/','-', strtolower(trim($matches[2])));

    $toc[] = str_repeat('  ',$h-1)."* [".implode('.',$section).". {$matches[2]}](#$anchor)";
    return str_repeat('#',$h)." ".implode('.',$section).". ".$matches[2]."

";
}, $markdown);

You can then print the processed markdown and toc:

   print(implode("
",$toc));
   print("

");
   print($markdown);

user_8165702 · Answer

I am using this website Markdown-TOC Creator where some can paste his whole markdown entry and the website is automtically creating all the required tags and TOC (table of content) so some can easily copy paste it into his own document.

user_2735286 · Answer

This is a small nodejs script which generates the table of contents and takes into account repeated titles:

const fs = require('fs')
const { mdToPdf } = require('md-to-pdf');

const stringtoreplace = ''

const processTitleRepetitions = (contents, titleMap) => {
  for (const content of contents) {
    titleMap[content.link] = typeof titleMap[content.link] === 'undefined'
      ? 0
      : titleMap[content.link] + 1
    if (titleMap[content.link] > 0) {
      content.link = `${content.link}-${titleMap[content.link]}`
    }
  }
}

const convertContentToPdf = async (targetFile) => {
  const pdf = await mdToPdf({path: targetFile}).catch(console.error)
  if(pdf) {
    const pdfFile = `${targetFile.replace(/\.md/, '')}.pdf`
    fs.writeFileSync(pdfFile, pdf.content)
    return pdfFile
  }
  throw new Error("PDF generation failed.")
}

const generateTOC = (file, targetFile) => {
  // Extract headers
  const fileContent = fs.readFileSync(file, 'utf-8')
  const titleLine = /((?<=^)#+)\s(.+)/
  const contents = fileContent.split(/
?
/).
    map(line => line.match(titleLine)).
    filter(match => match).
    filter(match => match[1].length > 1).
    map(regExpMatchArray => {
      return {
        level: regExpMatchArray[1].length, text: regExpMatchArray[2],
        link: '#' + regExpMatchArray[2].replace(/(\s+|[.,/#!$%^&*;:{}=\-_`~()]+)/g, '-').toLowerCase(),
      }
    })
  const titleMap = {}
  processTitleRepetitions(contents, titleMap)
  // Write content
  let toctext = '## Table of Contents
'
  // Find the toplevel to adjust the level of the table of contents.
  const topLevel = contents.reduce((maxLevel, content) => Math.min(content['level'], maxLevel), 1000)
  levelCounter = {}
  contents.forEach(item => {
    let currentLevel = parseInt(item.level)
    levelCounter[currentLevel] = levelCounter[currentLevel] ? levelCounter[currentLevel] + 1 : 1
    Object.entries(levelCounter).forEach(e => {
      if(currentLevel < parseInt(e[0])) {
        levelCounter[e[0]] = 0
      }
    })
    const level = Array(currentLevel - topLevel).fill('	').join('')
    const text = `${levelCounter[currentLevel]}. [${item['text']}](${item['link']}) 
`
    toctext += level + text
  })

  const updatedContent = fileContent.toString().replace(stringtoreplace, toctext)
  fs.writeFileSync(targetFile, updatedContent)
  convertContentToPdf(targetFile).then((pdfFile) => {
    console.info(`${pdfFile} has been generated.`)
  })
}

const args = process.argv.slice(2)

if(args.length < 2) {
  console.error("Please provide the name of the markdown file from which the headers should be extracted and the name of the file with the new table of contents")
  console.info("Example: node MD_TOC.js  ")
  process.exit(1)
}

const source_md = args[0]
const target_md = args[1]

generateTOC(source_md, target_md)

To use it you will need to inject in your markdown file.

Here is how you can use it:

generateTOC('../README.md', '../README_toc.md')

The first argument is the source markdown file and the second one the file with the markdown.

user_629238 · Answer

If you're using Discount markdown, enable a flag -ftoc to auto-generate and use -T to prepend a table of contents, e.g.:

markdown -T -ftoc <


will produce

 heading 1
 
  heading 2
 
 


heading 1
...

Apparently you can use markdown -toc as well, which the man does not mention, but the USAGE info does (trigger by illegal option like markdown -h).

It took me a while reading the source to figure this out, so I'm writing it down mostly for future me. I'm using discount markdown on Arch Linux, from the discount package. man doesn't really tell you it's discount, but mentions David Parsons under AUTHOR.
markdown --version
# markdown: discount 2.2.7