Markdown in Apex?

Has anyone built a Markdown parser in Apex? Looking to do something like this:

String raw = 'This is a *Markdown* string.  Large, multiline, has links & headings';
Markdown mdParser = new Markdown();
String parsed = mdParser.parse(raw);
System.debug(parsed);

// ==> 'This is a <em>Markdown</em> string.  Large, multiline, has links & headings'

Answers:

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Method 1

I would recommend using an API to parse your markdown and return back html. One service I found that looks like it would work is from Github: https://developer.github.com/v3/markdown/.

Method 2

No, there’s not currently any markdown support in apex, although it’s conceivably possible to write one with enough effort.

As Daniel Hoechst suggested making a callout to an external markdown rendering service is very likely the easiest and fastest way of handling this.

On top of that it’s very likely that any custom markdown rendering engine would have some compatibility bugs or security holes (depending on markdown flavor you can include raw HTML) unless you build an utterly amazing test suite.

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