Markdown Conversion

Converting Obsidian-flavoured markdown to HTML in a standalone manner is a very straightforward task, using MoltenObsidian. Dealing with a standalone markdown file, nothing more than the base Nodsoft.MoltenObsidian library is needed. You won't be importing entire vaults, merely declaring your markdown text, and that's it.

The Basics

It all starts with the ObsidianText object.
Using its .ToHtml() method provides a turnkey solution for rendering Markdown to HTML using sensible defaults similar to the parsing/rendering rules found in Obsidian.

using Nodsoft.MoltenObsidian;

// Create a new ObsidianText instance with the content to convert
ObsidianText markdown = new(@"
# This is a Markdown header  
  
This is a Markdown paragraph.
");

// Convert to HTML
string html = markdown.ToHtml()

// Our `html` string then equates to this :
/*
	<h1 id="this-is-a-markdown-header">This is a Markdown header</h1>  
	<p>This is a Markdown paragraph.</p>
*/

Customizing the converter

MoltenObsidian uses Markdig as its Markdown engine. This allows us to provide downstream developers with great extensibility when it comes to Markdown parsing and rendering. On top of implementing its own specs (some of which aren't implemented within Obsidian), it allows us to provide the appropriate extensions for any Obsidian-specific syntax, such as Internal Links and Tags.

However, there are instances where a downstream developer may want to further customize the pipeline, to add, remove, or alter certain conversion elements.

Internally, all conversion done in ObsidianText instances is handled by the Default ObsidianHtmlConverter, which wraps around a MarkdownPipeline. Building this pipeline from Obsidian defaults can be achieved using the ObsidianPipelineBuilder, which provides the base defaults for the entire library.
Downstream developers wishing to customize further their converter whilst keeping in sync with future MoltenObsidian releases are encouraged to use the ObsidianPipelineBuilder as baseline for their custom pipeline needs.

Frontmatter parsing

Per Obsidian's markdown specifications, any markdown text can be prefaced with a YAML Frontmatter section (dubbed Properties by Obsidian in newer versions) :

---
name: "Example"
description: "Instead of describing this note, i'll tell you a secret : This will never be displayed!"
---

# This is a Markdown header  
  
This is a Markdown paragraph.

This Frontmatter section is omitted from HTML render, however is retained under ObsidianText.Frontmatter, which is a Dictionary<string, object> property. This allows any markdown note to pass metadata about its content, and allows MoltenObsidian to control a note's behaviour in vaults.