EpicEditor is an embeddable JavaScript Markdown editor with split fullscreen editing, live previewing, automatic draft saving, offline support, and more. For developers, it offers a robust API, can be easily themed, and allows you to swap out the bundled Markdown parser with anything you throw at it.

Because, WYSIWYGs suck. Markdown is quickly becoming the replacement. GitHub, Stackoverflow, and even blogging apps like Posterous are now supporting Markdown. EpicEditor allows you to create a Markdown editor with a single line of JavaScript:

var editor = new EpicEditor().load();

EpicEditor is easy to implement. Add the script and assets to your page, provide a target container and call load().

Download the latest release or clone the repo:

$ git clone [email protected]:OscarGodson/EpicEditor

<div id="epiceditor"></div>

<script src="epiceditor.min.js"></script>

var editor = new EpicEditor().load();

The EpicEditor constructor creates a new editor instance. Customize the instance by passing the options parameter. The example below uses all options and their defaults:

var opts = {
  container: 'epiceditor',
  basePath: 'epiceditor',
  clientSideStorage: true,
  localStorageName: 'epiceditor',
  parser: marked,
  file: {
    name: 'epiceditor',
    defaultContent: '',
    autoSave: 100
  },
  theme: {
    base:'/themes/base/epiceditor.css',
    preview:'/themes/preview/preview-dark.css',
    editor:'/themes/editor/epic-dark.css'
  },
  focusOnLoad: false,
  shortcut: {
    modifier: 18,
    fullscreen: 70,
    preview: 80,
    edit: 79
  }
}
var editor = new EpicEditor(opts);

Loads the editor by inserting it into the DOM by creating an iframe. Will trigger the load event, or you can provide a callback.

editor.load(function () {
  console.log("Editor loaded.")
});

Unloads the editor by removing the iframe. Keeps any options and file contents so you can easily call .load() again. Will trigger the unload event, or you can provide a callback.

editor.unload(function () {
  console.log("Editor unloaded.")
});

Grabs an editor element for easy DOM manipulation. See the Themes section below for more on the layout of EpicEditor elements.

• container: The element given at setup in the options.
• wrapper: The wrapping <div> containing the 2 editor and previewer iframes.
• wrapperIframe: The iframe containing the wrapper element.
• editor: The #document of the editor iframe (i.e. you could do editor.getElement('editor').body).
• editorIframe: The iframe containing the editor element.
• previewer: The #document of the previewer iframe (i.e. you could do editor.getElement('previewer').body).
• previewerIframe: The iframe containing the previewer element.

someBtn.onclick = function () {
  console.log(editor.getElement('editor').body.innerHTML); // Returns the editor's content
}

Opens a file into the editor.

openFileBtn.onclick = function () {
  editor.open('some-file'); // Opens a file when the user clicks this button
}

Imports a string of content into a file. If the file already exists, it will be overwritten. Useful if you want to inject a bunch of content via AJAX. Will also run .open() after import automatically.

importFileBtn.onclick = function () {
  editor.importFile('some-file',"#Imported markdown\nFancy, huh?"); //Imports a file when the user clicks this button
}

Returns the raw content of the file by default, or if given a type will return the content converted into that type. If you leave both parameters null it will return the current document's raw content.

syncWithServerBtn.onclick = function () {
  var theContent = editor.exportFile();
  saveToServerAjaxCall('/save', {data:theContent}, function () {
    console.log('Data was saved to the database.');
  });
}

Renames a file.

renameFileBtn.onclick = function () {
  var newName = prompt('What do you want to rename this file to?');
  editor.rename('old-filename.md', newName); //Prompts a user and renames a file on button click
}

Manually saves a file. EpicEditor will save continuously every 100ms by default, but if you set autoSave in the options to false or to longer intervals it's useful to manually save.

saveFileBtn.onclick = function () {
  editor.save();
}

Deletes a file.

removeFileBtn.onclick = function () {
  editor.remove('example.md');
}

If no name is given it returns an object containing all the file objects. If a name is specified it will return just that single file object.

var files = editor.getFiles();
for (x in files) {
  console.log('File: ' + x); //Returns the name of each file
};

Sets up an event handler (callback) for a specified event. For all event types, see the Events section below.

editor.on('unload', function () {
  console.log('Editor was removed');
});

Fires an event programatically. Similar to jQuery's .trigger()

editor.emit('unload'); // Triggers the handler provided in the "on" method above

Allows you to remove all listeners for an event, or just the specified one.

editor.removeListener('unload'); //The handler above would no longer fire

Puts the editor into preview mode.

previewBtn.onclick = function () {
  editor.preview();
}

Puts the editor into edit mode.

editBtn.onclick = function () {
  editor.edit();
}

You can hook into specific events in EpicEditor with on() such as when a file is created, removed, or updated. Below is a complete list of currently supported events and their description.

Theming is easy in EpicEditor. There are three different <iframe>s which means styles wont leak between the "chrome" of EpicEditor, previewer, or editor. Each one is like it's own web page. In the themes directory you'll see base, preview, and editor. The base styles are for the "chrome" of the editor which contains elements such as the utility bar containing the icons. The editor is the styles for the contents of editor <iframe> and the preview styles are applied to the preview <iframe>.

The HTML of a generated editor (excluding contents) looks like this:

<div id="container">
  <iframe id="epiceditor-instance-id">
    <html>
      <head>
        <link type="text/css" id="" rel="stylesheet" href="epiceditor/themes/base/epiceditor.css" media="screen">
      </head>
      <body>
        <div id="epiceditor-wrapper">
          <iframe id="epiceditor-editor-frame">
            <html>
              <head>
                <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="epiceditor/themes/editor/epic-dark.css" media="screen">
              </head>
              <body contenteditable="true">
                <!-- raw content -->
              </body>
            </html>
          </iframe>
          <iframe id="epiceditor-previewer-frame">
            <html>
              <head>
                <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="epiceditor/themes/preview/github.css" media="screen">
              </head>
              <body>
                <div id="epiceditor-preview">
                  <!-- rendered html -->
                </div>
              </body>
            </html>
          </iframe>
          <div id="epiceditor-utilbar">
            <img width="16" src="epiceditor/images/preview.png" class="epiceditor-toggle-btn">
            <img width="16" src="epiceditor/images/fullscreen.png" class="epiceditor-fullscreen-btn">
          </div>
        </div>
      </body>
    </html>
  </iframe>
</div>

EpicEditor is set up to allow you to use any parser that accepts and returns a string. This means you can use any flavor of Markdown, process Textile, or even create a simple HTML editor/previewer (parser: false). The possibilities are endless. Just make the parser available and pass its parsing function to the EpicEditor setting and you should be all set.

For even more customization/optimization you can replace the default built-in processor on build. Running jake build parser=path/to/parser.js will override the default Marked build and replace it with your custom script.

See the custom parsers wiki page for more.

Contributions are greatly encouraged and appreciated. For more on ways to contribute please check the wiki: Contributing Guide.

EpicEditor relies on Marked to parse markdown and is brought to you in part by Oscar Godson and John Donahue. Special thanks to Adam Bickford for the bug fixes and being the QA for pull requests. Lastly, huge thanks to Sebastian Nitu for the amazing logo and doc styles.