Use custom helper methods from within markdown

[sts]

I would like to call custom middleman helper methods from within markdown texts.
#521 + #544 already added support for middleman's image and link helpers, this code would have to be more generalized.

[bhollis]

Could you describe in some more detail how that would work? I don't know of any facility in Markdown for calling arbitrary methods.

You can of course chain templates to get this: myfile.html.markdown.erb will run the file through ERb, then Markdown, giving you a chance to generate HTML with helpers and still use Markdown syntax.

[sts]

Basically I'm looking for a way to ease embedding elements into blog posts. I took a short glance at octopress and found they provide a lot of plugins; eg. for embedding Gists, Youtube or Vimeo videos.

At a first glance it looked like they were just calling these from markdown templates, then I also found your previous contribution. I just took a closer look and I think these are actually liquid tags instead. But as far as I could see there is currently no (documented?) way of extending middleman in the same way. Right?

[bhollis]

I'm not sure, but I think Middleman should support Liquid templates, and then you could probably just load the Octopress extensions. I've thought about it before but haven't gotten around to trying it.

[tdreyno]

We do support Liquid.

[pauldowman]

@bhollis said:

You can of course chain templates to get this: myfile.html.markdown.erb will run the file through ERb, then Markdown, giving you a chance to generate HTML with helpers and still use Markdown syntax.

Are you sure? That doesn't seem to work for me, it seems to ignore the markdown and treat it as if it were just .html.erb

[pauldowman]

@bhollis nevermind, it works now after switching to redcarpet! I have the following config:

set :markdown_engine, :redcarpet
set :markdown, :fenced_code_blocks => true,
               :autolink => true, 
               :smartypants => true

[SachaG]

I'm using redcarpet and trying to use tag helpers inside *.md.erb blog posts that are then sent to a HAML template. This works:

<%= tag :img, :src => "/my_image.png" %>

But this doesn't:

<%= content_tag :p, :class => "stuff" do %>
  Hello
<% end %>

I get this error:

; @_out_buf.concat(( content_tag :p, :class => "stuff" do ).to_s)

/Users/sacha/Dev/tmb-contents/source/book/02-getting_started.erb:125: syntax error, unexpected keyword_end, expecting ')'
    /Users/sacha/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/tilt-1.3.6/lib/tilt/template.rb:227:in `class_eval'
    /Users/sacha/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/tilt-1.3.6/lib/tilt/template.rb:227:in `compile_template_method'
    /Users/sacha/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/tilt-1.3.6/lib/tilt/template.rb:208:in `compiled_method'
    /Users/sacha/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/tilt-1.3.6/lib/tilt/template.rb:143:in `evaluate'
    /Users/sacha/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/tilt-1.3.6/lib/tilt/template.rb:77:in `render'

I've got two questions, 1) is this supposed to work, and 2) if it did, could I have Markdown content inside the tag helper?

[tdreyno]

I don't remember, does content_tag with a blog not use the leading =? Try it without.

[SachaG]

Yep, that was it, thanks! Maybe that should be mentioned on http://middlemanapp.com/helpers/ ?