🔍 Code Extractor

Converts basic Markdown syntax to HTML markup compatible with ReportLab PDF generation, including support for clickable links, bold, italic, and inline code formatting.

Purpose

This function transforms common Markdown formatting patterns into HTML tags that can be rendered by ReportLab's Paragraph component when generating PDF documents. It specifically handles markdown links [text](url), bold text (**text**), italic text (*text*), and inline code (`code`), converting them to their HTML equivalents with appropriate styling for PDF output.

Source Code

def convert_markdown_to_html(text):
    """Convert basic markdown to HTML for reportlab, including clickable links"""
    import re
    
    # Convert markdown links [text](url) to HTML links
    text = re.sub(r'\[([^\]]+)\]\(([^)]+)\)', r'<a href="\2">\1</a>', text)
    
    # Convert markdown formatting to HTML
    text = re.sub(r'\*\*(.*?)\*\*', r'<b>\1</b>', text)  # Bold
    text = re.sub(r'\*(.*?)\*', r'<i>\1</i>', text)      # Italic
    text = re.sub(r'`(.*?)`', r'<font name="Courier">\1</font>', text)  # Code
    
    return text

Parameters

Parameter Details

text: A string containing Markdown-formatted text. Expected to contain basic Markdown syntax including links [text](url), bold **text**, italic *text*, and inline code `text`. Can be plain text without Markdown, which will be returned unchanged. No length constraints, but should be a valid string type.

Return Value

Returns a string containing HTML-formatted text. Markdown links are converted to <a href="url">text</a>, bold text to <b>text</b>, italic text to <i>text</i>, and inline code to <font name="Courier">text</font>. The returned HTML is specifically formatted for ReportLab's Paragraph rendering engine. If input contains no Markdown, returns the original text unchanged.

Dependencies

• re

Required Imports

import re

Usage Example

import re

def convert_markdown_to_html(text):
    import re
    text = re.sub(r'\[([^\]]+)\]\(([^)]+)\)', r'<a href="\2">\1</a>', text)
    text = re.sub(r'\*\*(.*?)\*\*', r'<b>\1</b>', text)
    text = re.sub(r'\*(.*?)\*', r'<i>\1</i>', text)
    text = re.sub(r'`(.*?)`', r'<font name="Courier">\1</font>', text)
    return text

# Example usage
markdown_text = "Visit [Google](https://google.com) for **bold** and *italic* text with `code`."
html_output = convert_markdown_to_html(markdown_text)
print(html_output)
# Output: Visit <a href="https://google.com">Google</a> for <b>bold</b> and <i>italic</i> text with <font name="Courier">code</font>.

# Use with ReportLab
from reportlab.platypus import Paragraph
from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet
styles = getSampleStyleSheet()
para = Paragraph(html_output, styles['Normal'])

Best Practices

• This function uses non-greedy regex matching (.*?) to handle nested or multiple instances of formatting on the same line
• The order of regex substitutions matters: links are processed first to avoid interfering with bold/italic patterns that might appear in URLs
• This is a basic converter and does not handle all Markdown syntax (e.g., headers, lists, blockquotes, images)
• The function does not escape HTML entities in the input text, so pre-existing HTML may interfere with Markdown conversion
• For complex Markdown documents, consider using a full Markdown parser library like markdown2 or mistune
• The Courier font reference assumes ReportLab has access to this font; ensure font availability in your ReportLab environment
• Nested formatting (e.g., ***bold and italic***) may not render as expected due to the order of regex operations
• URLs in markdown links are not validated or sanitized; ensure input is from trusted sources or add validation

Tags

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