Wrapper around SimpleMDE to make it into a Vue.js component

fo-markdown-note Component for Vue.js

fo-markdown-note is a Vue.js component that provides a simple Markdown editor that can be included in your Vue.js project.

fo-markdown-note is a thin Vue.js wrapper around the SimpleMDE Markdown editor JavaScript control.

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fo-markdown note is written in ECMAScript 6th Edition (a.k.a. ECMAScript 2015, a.k.a. ES6) and is intended for inclusion in an ES6 application. No provision has been made for supporting earlier JavaScript editions.

fo-markdown-note is provided as an ES6 module. No provision has been made for older idiosyncratic module formats such as CommonJS or AMD.

fo-markdown-note is packaged into a single file using rollup.js. Currently the bundle is not minified or uglified; we intend to do this in a later release.

Using fo-markdown-note

To include fo-markdown-note in your project, simply import it using the ES6 import statement:

import FoMarkdownNote from 'fo-markdown-note-bundle.js'

Then include it as a component in your Vue.js model:

var vueModel = new Vue({
    el: '#app',
    components: {
        FoMarkdownNote
    }
})

This will make the <fo-markdown-note> tag available for use within your project's HTML.

Attributes

The following attributes can be included in an <fo-markdown-note> tag:

id Required; every <fo-markdown-note> instance must have a unique id value
note The initial contents of the note

Values for the following attributes are expressed using CSS syntax:

bgcolor The markdown note's background color
color The note's text color
fontFamily The typeface to use
fontSize How big you want the type to be

Events

on-change is the only event fo-markdown-note explicitly raises.

Example

<fo-markdown-note 
    id="note1"                    
    note="Remember to do what I forgot to do."
    bgcolor="LemonChiffon"
    v-on:change="noteOnChange()">
</fo-markdown-note>

Building fo-markdown-note

The source code for fo-markdown-note can be found in the src directory. The build process uses the file fo-markdown-note.js plus files from the src/lib directory and the src/node_modules directory.

When you clone or download the git repo, you don't get the src/node_modules directory. Since this directory can be easily re-generated using npm, there's no reason to include it in the git repo. The src/package.json contains all of the information needed to re-generate the src/node_modules directory. To do this, cd to the src directory and enter the command:

npm install

npm will fetch and install all of the node modules listed in package.json.

fo-markdown-note is built into a rollup.js bundle using the build.sh script found in the src directory. At this writing, build.sh contains only the command rollup -c. We have the habit of creating a build.sh script no matter how simple its contents so that we never have to remember which command(s) to use for different kinds of projects.

To build the bundle, cd to the src directory and enter the command

./build.sh

After a successful build, you should see the following results:

fo-markdown-note.js → ../dist/fo-markdown-note-bundle.js...
created ../dist/fo-markdown-note-bundle.js in 1.8s

Running the Test Application

The included test application can be run from the test directory.

As you did with the src directory, you must run npm install to re-generate the node_modules directory used by the test application.

The test application can be run using the http-server npm module. To run it, cd to the test directory and enter the command

http-server

This will open a simple web server that serves its content on http://localhost:8080.

Dependencies

fo-markdown-note's dependencies fall into two categories, those that are bundled into fo-markdown-note-bundle-js and those that are expected to be present in the project in which fo-markdown-note is used.

The latter category includes widely-used libraries such as JQuery, Lodash, and Vue.js.

Bundled into fo-markdown-note-bundle-js are libraries that are unique or specific to fo-markdown-note. Since the main purpose of fo-markdown-note is to wrap SimpleMDE into a Vue.js component, SimpleMDE and its CodeMirror dependency are bundled.

You can change which libraries you want to bundle or keep external by editing the src/package.json file and moving them between the dependencies and devDependencies sections, or through use of the external option in src/rollup.config.js. You need to re-build the bundle after making any such changes.

Getting fo-markdown-note from NPM

If you want to use the dist/fo-markdown-note-bundle.js in your project and don't think you'll ever need to re-build it, you can obtain it from NPM using the command

npm install fo-markdown-note

This will place a copy of fo-markdown-note-bundle.js in your project's node_modules directory along with its dependencies. You can then import it into your ES6 JavaScript using the command

import FoMarkdownNote from 'node_modules/fo-markdown-note/fo-markdown-note-bundle.js'

In this scenario, fo-markdown-note-bundle.js will contain all of the bundled dependencies, and the external dependencies will be made known to NPM in the npm/package.json file. This package.json file is different from the one found in the src directory, and is used only for publishing on NPM.