pandoc/doc/using-the-pandoc-api.md

% Using the pandoc API % John MacFarlane

Pandoc can be used as a Haskell library, to write your own conversion tools or power a web application. This document offers an introduction to using the pandoc API.

Detailed API documentation at the level of individual functions and types is available at https://hackage.haskell.org/package/pandoc.

Pandoc's architecture, and a simple example

Pandoc structure, readers, writers.

example of using a reader.

example of using a writer.

chaining them together.

The PandocMonad class

Pandoc's functions define computations that can be run in any instance of the PandocMonad typeclass. Two instances are provided: PandocIO and PandocPure. The difference is that computations run in PandocIO are allowed to do IO (for example, read a file), while computations in PandocPure are free of any side effects. PandocPure is useful when you want to prevent users from doing anything malicious.

Here's an example of such a computation, from the module Text.Pandoc.Class:

-- | Get the verbosity level.
getVerbosity :: PandocMonad m => m Verbosity

motivations Class.

The Pandoc structure

blocks/inlines

Readers and writers

getReader, getWriter

Options

various reader and writer options you can set. templates extensions

Builder

Inlines vs Inline, etc. Monoid

example: report from CSV data

Templates and other data files

Handling errors and warnings

Generic transformations

Walk and syb for AST transformations

Filters

just the basic idea of toJSONFilter the rest can be left to filters.md

Self-contained

PDF

Custom PandocMonad instances

Creating a front-end

Text.Pandoc.App