mdast-util-cite

Extension for mdast-util-from-markdown and mdast-util-to-markdown to support pandoc-style citations. Converts the token stream produced by micromark-extension-cite into an abstract syntax tree.

Note that this extension only parses the input -- it is up to you to assign meaning to these citations by looking up each key in a .bibtex file or other tagged citation database.

Using remark? You probably shouldn’t use this package directly, but instead use remark-cite. See micromark-extension-cite for a full description of the supported syntax.

Install

Install @benrbray/mdast-util-cite on npm.

npm install @benrbray/mdast-util-cite

Usage

Markdown to AST

import fromMarkdown from 'mdast-util-from-markdown'
import { citeSyntax } from 'micromark-extension-cite'
import { citeFromMarkdown } from 'mdast-util-cite'

let ast = fromMarkdown('[see @wadler1989, sec. 1.3; and -@hughes1990, pp.4]', {
  extensions: [citeSyntax()],
  mdastExtensions: [citeFromMarkdown]
})

The corresponding node in the abstract syntax tree has the form below, where:

• value contains the original markdown source
• data.altSyntax will be true if the citation uses the alternate syntax
• data.citeItems is a list of items cited by the node
  • each item has a key and optionally prefix and suffix strings
  • if the item's key was preceded by a -, item.suppressAuthor will be true

{
    "type": "cite",
    "value": "[see @wadler1989, sec. 1.3; and -@hughes1990, pp.4]",
    "data": {
        "citeItems": [
            {
                "prefix": "see ",
                "key": "wadler1989",
                "suffix": ", sec. 1.3"
            },{
                "prefix": " and ",
                "suppressAuthor": true,
                "key": "hughes1990",
                "suffix": ", pp.4"
            }
        ]
    }
}

AST to Markdown

Taking the ast from the previous example,

import fromMarkdown from 'mdast-util-from-markdown'
import { citeToMarkdown } from 'mdast-util-cite'

const defaultOptions = {
    standardizeAltSyntax: false,
    enableAuthorSuppression: true,
    useNodeValue: false,
};

let markdownString = toMarkdown(ast, {
    extensions: [citeToMarkdown(defaultOptions)]
}).trim();

The result will be:

[see @wadler1989, sec. 1.3; and -@hughes1990, pp.4]

The citeToMarkdown extension has the following options:

• options.standardizeAltSyntax (default false): When true, nodes with data.altSyntax = true will be rendered in standard pandoc syntax [@cite] rather than the alternative syntax @[cite].

• options.enableAuthorSuppression (default true): When false, will not produce author suppression hyphens - in the output markdown, even if they are present in the AST.

• options.useNodeValue (default false): When true, every citation node serializes to its node.value, rather than being reconstructed from its data.citeItems list. When active, this setting overrides all other options.