Fully featured commonmark markdown rendering python flask server. Supports links, images and some extensions.

server.py

from flask import Flask, request, render_template, make_response, send_file
from markupsafe import Markup
from markdown_it import MarkdownIt
from mdit_py_plugins.footnote import footnote_plugin
from mdit_py_plugins.tasklists import tasklists_plugin
from mdit_py_plugins.front_matter import front_matter_plugin # parses header info
from mdit_py_plugins.texmath import texmath_plugin
import os

md = (
    MarkdownIt('commonmark', {'breaks':True, 'html':True})
    .enable('table')
    .enable('strikethrough')
    .use(footnote_plugin)
    .use(front_matter_plugin)
    .use(texmath_plugin)
)

tasklists_plugin(md, enabled=True) # need to enable checkboxes so we can style them on chrome

app = Flask(__name__)

not_found = Markup(md.render("<h3>file not found</h3><p>the file couldn't be found</p>"))

@app.get("/")
@app.get("/index.md")
@app.get("/index.html")
def index():
    text = readFile("index.md")
    return render_template("base.html", content=text)

@app.get("/<path:subpath>")
def read(subpath=""):
    subpath = "./text/" + subpath
    
    if subpath.endswith(".md"):
        if os.path.exists(subpath):
            text = readFile(subpath)
        else:
            text = not_found
    else:
        if os.path.exists(subpath):
            return send_file(subpath)
        else:
            return make_response("file not found", 404)

    return render_template("base.html", content=text)

def readFile(path):
    print("reading file", path)
    with open(path, "r", encoding="utf-8") as file:
        text = file.read()
    return Markup(md.render(text))

To make full use of this it expects the following:

• a file called index.md in the current directory. this is the start page
• a folder called templates with a file called base.html, this is your jinja2 template
  • place atleast the {{ content }} marker anywhere so text knows where to render to
• a folder called text, this is where you put all your files.

have fun.

you can start a simple debug server with python -m flask --app server run --debug