Concise syntax

Marko's concise syntax is very similar to the HTML syntax, except it's more... concise. Angle brackets are removed, and nesting is indentation-based.

All Marko files are in concise mode by default, and switch to HTML mode once there is a tag that uses the HTML syntax.

<div class="thumbnail">
  <img src="https://example.com/thumb.png">
</div>
// identical to


<div class="thumbnail">
  <img src="https://example.com/thumb.png">
</div>
div.thumbnail
  img src="https://example.com/thumb.png"
// identical to


div.thumbnail
  img src="https://example.com/thumb.png"

Attributes on multiple lines

Attributes may be comma-separated in all Marko tags.

<div
  id="hello"
  class=["class1", "class2", "class3"]
  style={ border: "1px solid red" }
/>
div#hello class=["class1", "class2", "class3"] style={ border: "1px solid red" }

Since commas indicate that another attribute is expected, they may be used to spread attributes across multiple lines.

<div id="hello" class="world" style={ border: "1px solid red" }/>
div#hello.world style={ border: "1px solid red" }

By convention, readability is improved if commas are organized at the beginning of each line with attributes.

<div
  id="hello"
  class=["class1", "class2", "class3"]
  style={ border: "1px solid red" }
>
  hello
</div>
div#hello class=["class1", "class2", "class3"] style={ border: "1px solid red" }
  -- hello

Text

Two or more hyphens (--) followed by whitespace may be used to begin content.

If text immediately follows the hyphens, the content is terminated at the end of the line.

-- Hello world

<div>Hello world</div>
-- Hello world

div -- Hello world

If hyphens are followed by a newline, the content is terminated by the same number of hyphens or at the next dedentation.

-- This is a bunch of text at the root of the tag


<details>
  since this is normal tag content, regular
  <strong>HTML Mode</strong>
   tags may be used freely.
  <summary>This content is implicitly closed</summary>
</details>
-- This is a bunch of text at the root of the tag


details
  -- since this is normal tag content, regular
  strong -- HTML Mode
  --  tags may be used freely.
  summary -- This content is implicitly closed

Tip

There may be more than two hyphens if necessary, but the number hyphens in the open and close must match.

<pre>
     ---   ---   ---
   --- -- -- ---  ---
  ---   ---   ---  ---
   ---       ---  ---
    ---     ---  ---
</pre>
pre
  --
  
     ---   ---   ---
   --- -- -- ---  ---
  ---   ---   ---  ---
   ---       ---  ---
    ---     ---  ---

  --

Root level text

The Marko parser starts out in the concise mode. Therefore, given the following template:

<Hello World/>
<Welcome to Marko/>
Hello World
Welcome to Marko

The output is:

<Hello World></Hello> <Welcome to Marko></Welcome>

The proper way to include root level text is with string literals or code fences.

"Hello World"
-- Welcome to Marko

Line Termination

A semicolon (;) indicates a newline

div; span; p

// identical to

div
span
p

A right angle bracket (>) indicates a newline with a tab (i. e. nested content).

div > span > p

// identical to

div
  span
    p

Tip

You can use the nesting syntax (>) to limit the amount of space before deeply nested content

div.shell > div.wrapper > p
  -- This text belongs to the paragraph

Contributors

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