In this episode, we're putting together a simple Markdown parser using Alpine.js. Don't worry, we're keeping things straightforward for now—there's no advanced stuff yet, like watchers or live previewing as you type. We'll come back and improve this project later in the course when we cover more advanced concepts.
We start by picking out a popular Markdown parsing library: marked
. We just grab its CDN link so we can use it quickly on the page. After that, we create our Alpine component, which mainly has a textarea for typing in Markdown and a button that lets us generate a preview.
The way it works is: you type your Markdown content into the textarea, click the 'Preview' button, and see the rendered HTML version of your input appear below. We're using Alpine's data binding for the textarea input, and a method to turn your raw Markdown into HTML with the marked
library when the preview button is pressed. For now, the parsing is triggered manually—no live updating yet.
You'll see the output first using Alpine's x-text
, and then we'll switch to x-html
so you can render actual HTML from your Markdown. We'll quickly play around with the parser, confirming that Markdown constructs like bold or multiple lines work as you'd expect.
This is just the beginning—a basic, button-triggered Markdown preview. Down the line, we'll revisit this and make it update live as you type, using more of Alpine's features!