Bullet Point Convertor Script

December 1, 2020•359 words

A function that converts list item from one format to another

Totally useless to anyone other than me, but this is something I use almost daily. When taking notes, I use a plaintext editor, and consistently make bullet points that contain a link in an easy-to-read format. However, sometimes I need to publish this content (as markdown), and therefore links would look a lot neater if they were using hyperlinks.

So something like this: - Google - A search engine: https://google.com
Would then become this: - [Google](https://google.com) - A search engine

Code


/**
 * A function that converts bullet points I make in note format
 * into hyperlinks in markdown format, for publishing
 */
function convertBullets (body) {
  let result = '';
  const lines = body.split(/\r?\n/);
  lines.forEach((line)=>{
    if(!line.startsWith('- ')){ // Not a bullet, nothing to do here
      result += line + '\n';
    } else if (!line.match('http')) { // No URL found, nothing to do here
      result += line + '\n';
    } else if (line.length < 1) { // No content found, nothing to do here
      result += line + '\n';
    } else { // Here begins the conversion
      // Extract the URL from the line
      const urlRegex = /(https?:\/\/[^ ]*)/;
      const url = line.match(urlRegex)[1];
      line = line.replace(urlRegex, '');

      // Convert Title + URL into MD Hyperlink
      const titleRegex = /(- [a-zA-Z0-9-. ]* -)/;
      if (line.match(titleRegex)) { // Double check title format is correct
        let title = line.match(titleRegex)[1].replace(/(- | -)/g,'').trim();
        line = line.replace(titleRegex, `[${title}](${url}) - `);
      } else { // Use text as title (for when desc not provided) 
        line = `[${line.replace(/[^a-zA-Z ]/g, '').trim()}](${url}) - `;
      }

      // Remove any trailing chars, and append it to the result
      line = line.trim().replace(/:$/, '').replace(/-$/, '')
      result += `- ${line} \n`;
    }
  });
  return result; // My work here is done
}

Usage Instructions

To use, just pass a paragraph of notes that may contain unformated bullets into the function, like:
convertBullets(sample);

Either use it through the UI below, or to fork/ make changes, you can use the CLI version here, on Repl.it, or the GUI version here, on JS Fiddle