mkdocs-macros-plugin: Unleash the power of MkDocs with variables and macros

• View the MkDocs macro documentation
• View the general Mkdocs documentation

• Overview
• Installation
  • Prerequisites
  • Standard installation
  • "Manual installation"
  • Declaration of plugin
  • Check that it works

Overview

mkdocs-macros-plugin is a plugin that makes it easier for contributors of an MkDocs website to produce richer and more beautiful pages. It transforms the markdown pages into jinja2 templates that use variables, calls to macros and custom filters.

Regular variables can be defined in four ways:

1. global (for designers of the website): in the mkdocs.yml file, under the extra heading
2. global(for contributors): in external yaml definition files
3. global (for programmers): in a main.py file (Python), by adding them to a dictionary
4. local (for contributors): in the markdown file, with a {%set variable = value %} statement

Similarly programmers can define macros and filters, as Python functions in the main.py file, which the users will then be able to use without much difficulty, as jinja2 directives in the markdown page.

You can leverage the power of Python in markdown thanks to jinja2 by writing this :

The unit price of product A is {{ unit_price }} EUR.
Taking the standard discount into account,
the sale price of 50 units is {{ price(unit_price, 50) }} EUR.

If you defined a price() function, this could translate into:

The unit price of product A is 10.00 EUR.
Taking the standard discount into account,
the sale price of 50 units is 450.00 EUR.

The result of a macro can be HTML code: this makes macros especially useful to make custom extensions to the syntax of markdown, such as buttons, calls to email, embedding YouTube videos, etc.

It is possible to use the wide range of facilities provided by Jinja2 templates.

Installation

Prerequisites

• Python version > 3.5
• MkDocs version >= 1.0 (it should work > 0.17 (it should be compatible with post 1.0 versions)

Standard installation

pip install mkdocs-macros-plugin

"Manual installation"

To install the package, download it and run:

python setup.py install

Declaration of plugin

Declare the plugin in the the file mkdocs.yml:

plugins:
    - search
    - macros

Note: If you have no plugins entry in your config file yet, you should also add the search plugin. If no plugins entry is set, MkDocs enables search by default; but if you use it, then you have to declare it explicitly.

Check that it works

The recommended way to check that the plugin works properly is to add the following command in one of the pages of your site (let's say info.md):

{{ macros_info() }}

In the terminal, restart the environment:

> mkdocs serve

You will notice that additional information now appears in the terminal:

INFO    -  Building documentation...
[macros] Macros arguments: {'module_name': 'main', 'include_yaml': [], 'j2_block_start_string': '', 'j2_block_end_string': '', 'j2_variable_start_string': '', 'j2_variable_end_string': ''}

Within the browser (e.g. http://127.0.0.1:8000/info), you should see a description of the plugins environment:

If you see it that information, you should be all set.

Give a good look at the General List, since it gives you an overview of what you can do out of the box with the macros plugin.

The other parts give you more detailed information.