mdbook-fetch

mdbook-fetch is a preprocessor for mdbook.

It is a work in progress, so it's not published on https://crates.io.

What does it do: It fetches remote markdown files and adds them to your book. The idea it that we can reuse content.

Install

cargo install --git https://github.com/iampi31415/mdbook-fetch --locked

Usage

1. Add to your book.toml the [preprocessor.fetch] table and now mdbook will use it to fetch remote markdown.
2. In any of your markdown files (files under src/) use {{#fetch <URL>}} where <URL> is to a raw markdown file.
   • For example

   This chapter is copied from [this source](https://github.com/rust-lang/mdBook)
   
   {{#fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rust-lang/mdBook/7b29f8a7174fa4b7b31536b84ee62e50a786658b/README.md}}`.

The requests for remote files are serial (one after another), so don't overuse it.

Tip

To disable it if it becomes annoying in development, add disable=true to the [mdbook.fetch] table.

Recommendation

Always add a line to the source of the remote content, and check that the license of their content allows reusing it.

Limitations

It does not preprocess the markdown received from the URL so it's your responsibility to ensure it's safe to use.

Importantly, it won't work for markdown files with images (unless the images have full URLs.)

This could potentially be fixed by guessing where are they stored, but it's a bit of effort.

License

GNU General Public License v3.0 or later, see COPYING.

Contributing

Any contributions are under the same license "GNU General Public License v3.0 or later".

This is a copyleft license, so modified or verbatim copies of this work must retain the license. On its own or embedded in software.

This is a way to ensure our software remains free, and a reminder to others restricting us that we are still fighting.

If put in a plugin and use the output of it, no specific license applies to the output, since the output does not contain the program.

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No AI code please.