MediaWiki

The MediaWiki parser handles the wikitext subset most commonly found in wiki exports — formatting, lists, headings, links, tables, and the HTML tags MediaWiki accepts inline.

Quick start

require "markbridge/mediawiki"

result = Markbridge.mediawiki_to_markdown("'''bold''' and ''italic''")
result.markdown
# => "**bold** and *italic*"

Like the other parsers, the convenience method returns a Markbridge::Conversion.

Supported syntax

Inline formatting

Wikitext	Renders as	AST node
'''bold'''	**bold**	AST::Bold
''italic''	*italic*	AST::Italic
'''''both'''''	***both***	AST::Bold + AST::Italic
[[target]]	[target](target)	AST::Url
[[target|display]]	[display](target)	AST::Url
[https://example.com text]	[text](href)	AST::Url

Block syntax

Wikitext	Renders as	AST node
= H1 = … ====== H6 ======	# H1 … ###### H6	AST::Heading
* item / ** sub	- item (nested)	AST::List
# item / ## sub	1. item (nested)	AST::List
----	---	AST::HorizontalRule
Line starting with a space	Code block	AST::Code
{| ... |}	GFM table	AST::Table

HTML tags

MediaWiki accepts a small set of inline HTML. Markbridge honors:

<nowiki>, <code>, <pre>, <br>, <s>, <del>, <u>, <ins>, <sup>, <sub>.

Inside <nowiki>, wiki syntax is preserved as literal text. Indented code and <pre> content render as fenced code blocks, even for a single line. <code> stays inline unless its content contains a newline.

Using the parser directly

parser = Markbridge::Parsers::MediaWiki::Parser.new
ast = parser.parse("== Section ==\n* one\n* two")

renderer = Markbridge::Renderers::Discourse::Renderer.new
renderer.render(ast)
# => "## Section\n\n- one\n- two"

MediaWiki’s block syntax is fixed — there’s no handler registry for headings, lists, tables, etc. Inline HTML-like tags (<nowiki>, <code>, <sup>, etc.) go through an InlineTagRegistry you can customize via the handlers: kwarg:

registry = Markbridge::Parsers::MediaWiki::InlineTagRegistry.default
registry.register("custom", :raw, MyCustomNode)

Markbridge.mediawiki_to_markdown(input, handlers: registry)

type is one of :raw (content preserved verbatim, not re-parsed), :formatting (content re-parsed), or :self_closing (leaf with no content).

For block-level customization, transform the AST after parsing, or register a different renderer tag via Markbridge.discourse_renderer(tags:).

Limitations

The parser targets the bulk of content you’ll see in wiki exports, not the full MediaWiki specification:

• No templates ({{Template}}). They’re passed through as literal text.
• No magic words or parser functions (__NOTOC__, {{#if:}}, etc.).
• Categories and file embeds are not translated to Discourse equivalents.
• Reference footnotes (<ref>) are not special-cased.

If your export relies on these, pre-process before handing it to Markbridge, or post-process the AST.