For most users, all you need to do is add the plugin to your JSDoc configuration (conf.json) as you would any other, by adding a reference to the plugin in the "plugins" entry:
...
"plugins": [ "plugins/markdown" ]
...
This will cause Markdown in @description tags (including implicit descriptions without tags), @classdesc tags, @param tags, @property tags, and @returns tags to be parsed.
Also, be sure to use leading asterisks in your doc comments! If you omit the leading asterisks, JSDoc's code parser may remove other asterisks that are used for Markdown formatting.
The plugin also offers several configuration options for advanced users who want GitHub integration, extended tag support, etc. All configuration for the Markdown plugin should be added to a "markdown" property in your JSDoc configuration:
...
"plugins": [ "plugins/markdown" ],
"markdown": {
"opt1": "value",
"opt2": [ "foo", "bar", "baz" ]
}
...
The plugin currently supports two Markdown parsers. You can select which parser to use by adding a "parser" property to your Markdown configuration:
...
"plugins": [ "plugins/markdown" ],
"markdown": {
"parser": "gfm"
}
...
The default parser is Dominic Baggott's excellent markdown-js. It can be explicitly selected by setting the parser to evilstreak and has one additional (and optional) configuration option, dialect, which can be used to select which of markdown-js' built-in dialects to use. If omitted, markdown-js' default dialect will be used.
...
"plugins": [ "plugins/markdown" ],
"markdown": {
"parser": "evilstreak",
"dialect": "Maruku"
}
...
The alternative parser is the modified Showdown parser supplied by GitHub for their GitHub Flavored Markdown. GFM provides several enhancements to standard Markdown syntax (see its documentation) intended to be useful to developers. It also has the ability to quickly link to GitHub repositories, files, and issues. It can be selected by setting the parser to gfm and supports three additional (and optional) configuration options.
The hardwrap option controls the hard wrapping of line ends. Unlike standard Markdown, GFM considers a single newline to indicate a "hard break" in the paragraph, but this doesn't work well with the line length limitations commonly used with comment documentation, so is disabled by default. If you want to turn hard wrapping back on, set hardwrap to true (or any non-falsy value).
The githubRepoName and githubRepoOwner indicate which GitHub repo should be used for GitHub links that do not fully specify a repo. These options have no effect unless used together, and if they are omitted, several of GFM's default link types will be unavailable. Conversely, if you supply both github* options but do not explicitly select gfm as your parser, it will be automatically selected for you.
...
"plugins": [ "plugins/markdown" ],
"markdown": {
"parser": "gfm",
"hardwrap": true
}
...
The "evilstreak" parser is flexible, extensible, currently maintained, and was the only parser available in earlier versions of the Markdown plugin, but doesn't support the useful GFM extensions. The "gfm" parser is based on the no-longer-maintained Showdown parser, but it provides GFM extensions.
In the future, if GFM support is made available for the "evilstreak" parser, this plugin will drop the "gfm" parser in favor of that support.
While the Markdown plugin already supports JSDoc's default tags, if you're using other plugins, you may well have extra tags available. You can tell the Markdown plugin to handle those extra tags as well using the tags property, which is an array of the tags* it should check in addition to the default set.
...
"plugins": [ "plugins/markdown" ],
"markdown": {
"tags": [ "foo", "bars", "bazzes" ]
}
...
* Because the Markdown plugin works with JSDoc's internal representation rather than with the source comments, the names you need to enter in the tags property aren't necessarily the same as the actual tag names. For example, in the default set of tags, @param is stored under params. If you are having trouble getting the Markdown plugin to work with your extra tags, either take a peek at the output of JSDoc's --explain command-line parameter (which displays the internal state that plugins work with) or ask the plugin author which "doclet properties" their plugin uses. The Markdown plugin supports strings, arrays, and objects/subdoclets.