Generates table of contents for markdown files inside local git repository. Links are compatible with anchors generated by github or other sites via a command line flag.

Table of Contents generated with DocToc

• Installation
• Usage
  • Adding toc to all files in a directory and sub directories
  • Update existing doctoc TOCs effortlessly
  • Adding toc to individual files
    • Examples
  • Using doctoc to generate links compatible with other sites
    • Example
  • Specifying location of toc
  • Specifying a custom TOC title
  • Specifying a maximum heading level for TOC entries
  • Printing to stdout
  • Usage as a git hook
  • Docker image

npm install -g doctoc

In its simplest usage, you can pass one or more files or folders to the doctoc command. This will update the TOCs of each file specified as well as of each markdown file found by recursively searching each folder. Below are some examples.

Go into the directory that contains you local git project and type:

doctoc .

This will update all markdown files in the current directory and all its subdirectories with a table of content that will point at the anchors generated by the markdown parser. Doctoc defaults to using the GitHub parser, but other modes can be specified.

In order to ignore a specific file when running doctoc on an entire directory, just add <!-- DOCTOC SKIP --> to the top of the file you wish to ignore.

If you already have a TOC inserted by doctoc, it will automatically be updated by running the command (rather than inserting a duplicate toc). Doctoc locates the TOC by the <!-- START doctoc --> and <!-- END doctoc --> comments, so you can also move a generated TOC to any other portion of your document and it will be updated there.

If you want to convert only specific files, do:

doctoc /path/to/file [...]

doctoc README.md

doctoc CONTRIBUTING.md LICENSE.md

In order to add a table of contents whose links are compatible other sites add the appropriate mode flag:

Available modes are:

--bitbucket bitbucket.org
--nodejs    nodejs.org
--github    github.com
--gitlab    gitlab.com
--ghost     ghost.org

doctoc README.md --bitbucket

By default, doctoc places the toc at the top of the file. You can indicate to have it placed elsewhere with the following format:

<!-- START doctoc -->
<!-- END doctoc -->

You place this code directly in your .md file. For example:

// my_new_post.md
Here we are, introducing the post. It's going to be great!
But first: a TOC for easy reference.

<!-- START doctoc -->
<!-- END doctoc -->

# Section One

Here we'll discuss...

Running doctoc will insert the toc at that location.

Use the --title option to specify a (Markdown-formatted) custom TOC title; e.g., doctoc --title '**Contents**' . From then on, you can simply run doctoc <file> and doctoc will will keep the title you specified.

Alternatively, to blank out the title, use the --notitle option. This will simply remove the title from the TOC.

Use the --maxlevel option to limit TOC entries to headings only up to the specified level; e.g., doctoc --maxlevel 3 .

By default,

• no limit is placed on Markdown-formatted headings,
• whereas headings from embedded HTML are limited to 4 levels.

You can print to stdout by using the -s or --stdout option.

Use --update-only or -u to only update the existing ToC. That is, the Markdown files without ToC will be left untouched. It is good if you want to use doctoc with lint-staged.

doctoc can be used as a pre-commit hook by using the following configuration:

repos:
-   repo: https://github.com/thlorenz/doctoc
    rev: ...  # substitute a tagged version
    hooks:
    -   id: doctoc

This will run doctoc against markdown files when committing to ensure the TOC stays up-to-date.

There's an unofficial Docker image project for doctoc, if you'd like to use doctoc via Docker or other container based CI/CD pipeline, you can take a look at PeterDaveHello/docker-doctoc