Markdown is a lightweight markup language with a plain-text-formatting syntax that can be converted to many other output formats. It provides a simple way to add HTML formatting like headings, bold, italic, bulleted lists, images, and so on to plain-text.

In this article, you'll learn how to convert HTML into Markdown in a Node.js application as well as in a web browser by using the Turndown library. Turndown is a customizable HTML to Markdown converter written in vanilla JavaScript.

Using Node.js

To use Turndown as a Node.js module, type the following command in your terminal to install it from NPM registry:

$ npm install turndown --save

After the installation is completed, you'll be able to import the Turndown module into your Node.js application like below:

// import Turndown module
const TurndownService = require('turndown');

Now you can use the Turndown API to easily convert any HTML string to Markdown:

// create an instance of Turndown service
const turndownService = new TurndownService();

// convert HTML to Markdown
const markdown = turndownService.turndown(`
    <h1>JavaScript for Beginners</h1>
    <p>Follow <a href="https://attacomsian.com/blog">Atta</a> to learn <b>JavaScript</b> from scratch!</p>
`);

// output Markdown
console.log(markdown);

You should see the following output printed on the console:

JavaScript for Beginners
========================

Follow [Atta](https://attacomsian.com/blog) to learn **JavaScript** from scratch!

Using Vanilla JavaScript

Turndown can also be used in a web browser to convert HTML to Markdown. Just include the following JavaScript file in your HTML document:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/turndown/dist/turndown.js"></script>

After including the script, you should be able to convert HTML to Markdown by using the same code we've used in the above example:

// create an instance of Turndown service
const turndownService = new TurndownService();

// convert HTML to Markdown
const markdown = turndownService.turndown(`
    <h1>JavaScript for Beginners</h1>
    <p>Follow <a href="https://attacomsian.com/blog">Atta</a> to learn <b>JavaScript</b> from scratch!</p>
`);

// output Markdown
console.log(markdown);

In vanilla JavaScript, you can even pass DOM nodes as input to Turndown API:

// convert document <body> to Markdown
const markdown = turndownService.turndown(document.body);

// convert first <p> tag to Markdown
const markdown = turndownService.turndown(document.querySelector('p'));

Take a look at the documentation or interactive demo to learn more about Turndown capabilities.

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