Technical Design: Google Docs to Markdown Generator

Components (all in Phase 1)

• (80%) Gdoc2MD Node Script: converts Google Docs to Markdown - writes to specified GitHub location or local folder. Uses gdoc metadata from Knowledgebase Server.
• (80%) Knowledgebase UI Server - stores metadata for the Google Docs (gets input from 1c and 2)
• (Not started) Gdoc2MD API node server
  • converts gdocs to md in configured folder using UI Knowledgebase Server to determine which branch to publish to (or to write locally). Potentially Phase 1 would need to manually enter the URL unless I can figure out a way to add the URL to the Knowledgebase UI.
• Github Website Repository
• Local file system with website for development

Integration Enhancements

• Gdocs App Scripts to Knowledgebase - add in provides option to update gdoc metadata for the displayed gdoc
• Gdocs App Script Web Hook to Knowledgebase - listen for Google Doc changes and call Node s
• Gdocs App Script to Knowledge Base: add in to execute a URL that brings up the record for the current document

Draft: System Flow

• Browser: Enter URL that calls Node Server =>
• Node Server:
  • Creates front matter for Google Docs using database
  • Reads google docs and converts based to markdown =>
  • Option A (write to Github) or B (write to deployment server)

Option A - Write to Github

Automatically:

• Write to github google-docs branch =>
• Create pull request to github-pages =>
• approve and merge pull request

Option B - write to deployment server

• Before Jekyll is run, write to directory used as source for Jekyll on deployment

Draft: Autorun - not started

Options Google Docs hook Scheduled batch jobs

Draft: Phase 1

• All local
• Fork website repo, clone to local
• Set up and configure script
• Run script
• reads google docs and converts
• writes to local website git dir
• Manually create a pull request

Draft: GDoc2MD - how it works

• Run jekyll to create initial version of website
• Fetch all GoogleDocs (as JSON) in specified folder and subfolders recursively
• Create GoogleDocObjs from GoogleDocs. GoogleDocsObj has the same structure as JSON with additional methods and attributes
  • Derive a list of markdown elements from each GoogleDocsObj
  • Create markdown from markdown elements using existing npmjs package "toMarkdown"
  • Post processing
    • Derive frontmatter
    • Combine frontmatter and markdown
    • remove blank lines
    • Derive filename from Google Docs description and append "-gdoc" (so that git will ignore if website is derived directly in git).
    • Write file to specified website directory or github (v2) or google doc (could have)