mdclense

A lightweight, efficient Python library for converting Markdown to plain text. mdclense strips away all Markdown formatting while preserving the original content, making it perfect for text analysis, content extraction, and data processing pipelines.

Features

• Comprehensive Markdown support
• Preserves content while removing formatting
• Handles complex nested structures
• Clean whitespace management
• JSON-like structure support
• Zero dependencies beyond Python standard library

Supported Markdown Elements

• Headers (ATX and Setext style)
• Emphasis (bold, italic, bold-italic)
• Links and images
• Lists (ordered, unordered, and task lists)
• Code blocks and inline code
• Blockquotes
• Tables
• Horizontal rules
• HTML tags
• Strikethrough
• Footnotes
• Escaped characters

Installation

pip install mdclense

Quick Start

from mdclense.parser import MarkdownParser


# Create a parser instance
parser = MarkdownParser()

# Convert markdown to plain text
markdown_text = """
# Hello World

This is a **bold** and *italic* text with a [link](http://example.com).

- List item 1
- List item 2
"""

plain_text = parser.parse(markdown_text)
print(plain_text)

Output:

Hello World

This is a bold and italic text with a link.

List item 1
List item 2

Advanced Usage

Handling JSON-like Structures

# Parse markdown content from JSON-like structure
json_text = '"answer": "This is **bold** text with a [link](url)"'
plain_text = parser.parse(json_text)
print(plain_text)  # Output: This is bold text with a link

Working with Code Blocks

markdown_text = '''
Here's some code:

```python
def hello():
    print("world")

'''

plain_text = parser.parse(markdown_text) print(plain_text) # Code blocks are replaced with [CODE BLOCK] placeholder

## API Reference

### MarkdownParser Class

```python
class MarkdownParser:
    def parse(markdown_text: str) -> str:
        """
        Convert markdown text to plain text by removing all markdown formatting.

        Args:
            markdown_text (str): The markdown text to be converted

        Returns:
            str: Plain text without markdown formatting
        """

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Testing

# Install development dependencies
pip install pytest

# Run tests
pytest tests/

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• Inspired by the need for a simple, dependency-free Markdown to plain text converter
• Thanks to all contributors who have helped shape this project