First VSCode Tasks in less than 5 minutes

I'm working on solution to automating the generation of my weekly post: Reading Notes. While this work is finished, I still need to do many steps manually. I introduced in a previous post VSCode, that already supports markdown. In fact, from any markdown file, you can press Ctrl+Shift+V to preview the oupput. However, today, it's not possible to do anything with this preview. This post explains how we can use VSCode task to fix this problem.

Goal

Create a task that will quickly transform my current open markdown file in HTML.

Step 1 - Get a Markdown parser

First, we need Markdown parser. I'm sure many different are available, but in this post, I will use markdown-js, a Node.js parser that is available on github. To install it, just execute the following command:
npm install -g markdown

Step 2 - Create a Task

Secondly, we need to create our task. Open Visual Studio Code, and type Ctrl+Shift+P to open the Command Palette and then start typing Configure Task. Press Enter or select “Configure Task Runner”. This will create a new file tasks.jon, with many different samples of tasks. Before you replace the content of the page by the following code, take a look at the comment block at the top of the page. You will see different context variables that are available.

// Simple Task to transform MarkDown to Html
{
    "version": "0.1.0",
    "command": "md2html",
    "isShellCommand": true,
    "args": ["${file}"]
}

This defines our task using the json format. The command name in this case is md2html and we pass the name of the current open file as parameter using the variable ${file}. Finally, the "isShellCommand" is set to true so the task will be triggered by pressing Ctrl+Shift+B.

Step 3 - Try it

To try it, open a markdown page, hit Ctrl+Shift+B, and voilĂ ! You should see in the output the HTML code generated.




References



~Frank

Reading Notes #186

published by Gartner
I finally watch most of the recorded sessions from Build, Ignite and MVPvConf, and I had more time to read.

Suggestion of the week

  • Learning to git bisect (Rural) - Very, very interesting walkthrough, I never knew Git got that kind of feature.

Cloud

Microsoft is currently the only vendor to be positioned as a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrants for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service , Application Platform as a Service , Cloud Storage Services and Server Virtualization

Programming


Miscellaneous


~Frank

Note about the image of this week: This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request here.

Microsoft MVP Virtual Conference, one more day to go


MVPvConf 2015

Yesterday, was the first day of the #MVPvConf 2015. I already write about this event presented by MVP for everyone.

I really enjoy switching from one path to the other following the best fits of my interest. I even got some real though decisions to take because two sessions were at the same time! But wait; there is more!


Today it's Day 2, and many great presentations will by available.

Developer track with topics like: Roslyn Windows 10 ASP.NET Azure Cross-Platform...

IT Pro track with topics like: DevOps System Center Hyper-V Migration Office 365...

Consumer track with topics like: Pivot Table Data Windows 10 Cortana OneNote Security...

LATAM track with topics like: Power BI Exchange Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) Office 365...

Brazil track with topics like: Azure Active Directory Hybrid Cloud SQL Server...


Build your own agenda, and come join-us!