ConvertFrom-Markdown: Parse Markdown Content into Structured Objects in PowerShell

Welcome back to Wahmans Powershell blog! Today, we’re diving into the ConvertFrom-Markdown cmdlet — a cool feature in PowerShell that allows you to convert the contents of a Markdown-formatted string or file into a MarkdownInfo object.

What does ConvertFrom-Markdown do?

According to Microsoft:

ConvertFrom-Markdown converts the contents of a string or a file to a MarkdownInfo object.

Why is that useful? If you’ve ever wanted to parse Markdown files like README.md or process Markdown elements programmatically within PowerShell — this cmdlet is your new best friend!

Examples from Beginner to Advanced

Example 1: Basic Markdown String

This basic example demonstrates how to convert a simple Markdown string into an object:

$markdown = """
# Hello World
This is a sample markdown string. 

- Item 1
- Item 2
"""

$result = ConvertFrom-Markdown -Markdown $markdown
$result.Html

This will output the HTML equivalent of the markdown.

Example 2: Converting a Markdown File

Let’s say you have a README.md file. You can easily convert it like this:

$result = ConvertFrom-Markdown -Path "C:\Projects\MyRepo\README.md"

# Output the HTML content
$result.Html

This is useful if you’re building tools to display or validate project documentation.

Example 3: Extracting Headers from Markdown

Let’s parse the Markdown and extract just the headings. This is great for generating documentation indexes or tables of content!

$markdown = Get-Content -Path ".\guide.md" -Raw
$parsed = ConvertFrom-Markdown -Markdown $markdown

# Regex to extract 
, 
, 
 tags from HTML
$parsed.Html -match "<h[1-6]>(.*?)</h[1-6]>" | ForEach-Object {
    [regex]::Matches($_, "<h(?<level>[1-6])>(?<text>.*?)</h[1-6]>") | ForEach-Object {
        "Level $($_.Groups['level'].Value): $($_.Groups['text'].Value)"
    }
}

This will give you lines like:

Level 1: Introduction
Level 2: Installation
Level 2: Usage

Example 4: Integrating with a Static Site Generator

Advanced usage — let’s say you’re building a simple static site generator in PowerShell. You can read Markdown files from a folder and convert them to HTML pages:

$sourceDir = ".\markdown"
$outputDir = ".\html"

Get-ChildItem -Path $sourceDir -Filter *.md | ForEach-Object {
    $content = Get-Content -Path $_.FullName -Raw
    $html = ConvertFrom-Markdown -Markdown $content

    $outFile = Join-Path $outputDir ($_.BaseName + ".html")
    $htmlContent = @"






$html


"@
    Set-Content -Path $outFile -Value $htmlContent
}

This allows you to quickly transform markdown pages into usable HTML files — all within PowerShell!

Conclusion

Whether you’re a beginner or scripting something more complex, ConvertFrom-Markdown has a solid place in your PowerShell toolkit. Markdown is everywhere — from GitHub READMEs to documentation — and now with PowerShell, you can interact with it programmatically and easily.

Happy scripting, and I will see you in the next post!