md2cf

A tool and library to convert documents written in Markdown to Confluence Storage format, and optionally upload them to a Confluence Server instance.

Features

• Convert Markdown documents. The library implements a Mistune renderer that outputs Confluence Storage Format.
• Basic Confluence API support. Embedded micro-implementation of the Confluence Server REST API with basic support for creating and updating pages.
• Upload automation. Includes a small script that can automate the upload process for you.

Installation

pip install md2cf

Upload script

usage: md2cf [-h] [-o HOST] [-u USERNAME] [-p PASSWORD] [--token TOKEN]
             [--insecure] -s SPACE [-a PARENT_TITLE | -A PARENT_ID] [-t TITLE]
             [-m MESSAGE] [-i PAGE_ID] [--prefix PREFIX]
             [--preface-markdown [PREFACE_MARKDOWN] | --preface-file
             PREFACE_FILE] [--collapse-single-pages]
             [--beautify-folders | --use-pages-file]
             [--collapse-empty | --skip-empty] [--dry-run] [--only-changed]
             [file_list [file_list ...]]

In order to upload a document, you'll need to supply at least the following five parameters:

• The hostname of your Confluence instance, including the path to the REST API (e.g. http://confluence.example.com/rest/api)
• Either
  • The username and password to use for logging into the instance, or
  • a personal access token
• The space in which to publish the page
• The files or directories to be uploaded -- or standard input if the list is missing

Example basic usage:

md2cf --host 'https://confluence.example.com/rest/api' --username foo --password bar --space TEST document.md

Or, if using a token:

md2cf --host 'https://confluence.example.com/rest/api' --bearer-token '2104v3ryl0ngt0k3n720' --space TEST document.md

Note that entering the password as a parameter on the command line is generally a bad idea. If you're running the script interactively, you can omit the --password parameter and the script will prompt for it.

For the security conscious out there or those who plan on using this as part of a pipeline, you can also supply the hostname, username, password, and token as environment variables: CONFLUENCE_HOST, CONFLUENCE_USERNAME, CONFLUENCE_PASSWORD, and CONFLUENCE_TOKEN.

If you're using self-signed certificates and/or want to ignore SSL errors, add the --insecure option.

You can specify multiple files and/or entire folders. If you specify a folder, it will be traversed recursively and all files ending in .md will be uploaded. See Uploading folders for more information.

If you just want to get a preview of what md2cf would do, the --dry-run option will print a list of page data but leave Confluence untouched.

Page title

The title of the page can come from a few sources, in order of priority from highest to lowest:

• the --title command line parameter
• a title entry in your document's front matter, i.e. a YAML block delimited by --- lines at the top of the file

  ---
  title: This is a title
  ---
  # Rest of the document here

• the first top-level header found in the document (i.e. the first # header)
• the filename if there are no top-level headers.

Note that if you're reading from standard input, you must either specify the title through the command line or have a title in the content as a header or in the front matter.

If you're uploading entire folders, you might want to add a prefix to each page title in order to avoid collisions. You can do this using the --prefix parameter.

Adding a preface

The --preface-markdown and --preface-file commands allow you to add some text at the top of each page. This is useful if you're mirroring documentation to Confluence and want people to know that it's going to be overwritten in an automated fashion.

The first option allows you to specify markdown text right on the command line, and defaults to a paragraph saying

Contents are auto-generated, do not edit.

The second option takes a path to a markdown file and will prepend its contents to every page. Note that this is parsed separately and added to the body after the main page has been parsed, so it won't influence behaviour tied to the page contents such as title or front matter detection.

Parent page

If you want to upload the page under a specific parent, you can supply the parent's page ID as the --parent-id parameter, or its title through the --parent-title parameter. Note

Update message

You can also optionally specify an update message to describe the change you just made by using the --message parameter. Note that if you're using the --only-changed option there will also be a hash of the page/attachment contents at the end of the version update message.

Updating an existing page

Uploading a page with the same title twice will update the existing one.

If you want to update a page by page ID, use the --page-id option. This allows you to change the page's title, or to update a page with a title that is annoying to use as a parameter.

Avoiding uploading content that hasn't changed

If you want to avoid redundant uploads (and the corresponding update emails) when your content hasn't changed, you can add the --only-changed option. Note that this will store a hash of the page/attachment contents at the end of the version update message.

Uploading folders

md2cf can upload entire folders for you. This can be useful if you want to mirror some in-repo documentation to Confluence.

When uploading entire folders, md2cf will recursively traverse all subdirectories and upload any .md file it encounters. Folders will be represented by empty pages in the final upload, since Confluence can only nest pages under other pages. You can modify this behaviour through three command line parameters.

Customizing folder names

Folder names like interesting-subsection or dir1 are not particularly nice. If you pass the --beautify-folders option, all spaces and hyphens in folder names will be replaced with spaces and the first letter will be capitalized, producing Interesting subsection and Dir1.

Alternatively, you can create a YAML file called .pages with the following format in every folder you wish to rename. If you pass the --use-pages-file, the folder will be given that title.

title: "This is a fantastic title!"

Collapse single pages

You can collapse directories that only contain one document by passing the --collapse-single-pages parameter. This means that a folder layout like this:

document.md
folder1/
  documentA.md
  documentB.md
folder2/
  other-document.md

will be uploaded to Confluence like this:

document
folder1/
  documentA
  documentB
other-document

Dealing with empty folders

You can also modify the behaviour for empty folders. If you specify --skip-empty, this tree layout:

document.md
folder1/
  folder2/
    folder3/
      other-document.md
folderA/
  interesting-document.md
    folderB/
      folderC/
        lonely-document.md

will be uploaded as:

document
folder3/
  other-document
folderA/
  interesting-document
  folderC/
    lonely-document

Alternatively, you can specify --collapse-empty to merge empty folders together with the following result:

document
folder1/folder2/folder3/
  other-document
folderA/
  interesting-document
  folderB/folderC/
    lonely-document

Library usage

md2cf can of course be used as a Python library. It exposes two useful modules: the renderer and the API wrapper.

Renderer

Use the ConfluenceRenderer class to generate Confluence Storage Format output from a markdown document.

import mistune
from md2cf.confluence_renderer import ConfluenceRenderer

markdown_text = "# Page title\n\nInteresting *content* here!"

renderer = ConfluenceRenderer(use_xhtml=True)
confluence_mistune = mistune.Markdown(renderer=renderer)
confluence_body = confluence_mistune(markdown_text)

API

md2cf embeds a teeny-tiny implementation of the Confluence Server REST API that allows you to create, read, and update pages.

from md2cf.api import MinimalConfluence

confluence = MinimalConfluence(host='http://example.com/rest/api', username='foo', password='bar')

confluence.create_page(space='TEST', title='Test page', body='<p>Nothing</p>', update_message='Created page')

page = confluence.get_page(title='Test page', space_key='TEST')
confluence.update_page(page=page, body='New content', update_message='Changed page contents')