API's for calling MathJax from node.js
npm install mathjax-nodeThis repository contains a library that provides an API to call MathJax from Node.js programs. The API converts individual math expressions (in any of MathJax's input formats) into HTML (with CSS), SVG, or MathML code.
Use
``
npm install mathjax-node
to install mathjax-node and its dependencies.
Note:
The current version of mathjax-node requires Node.js v6 or later, and uses jsdom version 11.
mathjax-node provides a library, ./lib/main.js. Below is a very minimal example for using it - the tests and the examples mentioned above provide more advanced examples.
`javascript
// a simple TeX-input example
var mjAPI = require("mathjax-node");
mjAPI.config({
MathJax: {
// traditional MathJax configuration
}
});
mjAPI.start();
var yourMath = 'E = mc^2';
mjAPI.typeset({
math: yourMath,
format: "TeX", // or "inline-TeX", "MathML"
mml:true, // or svg:true, or html:true
}, function (data) {
if (!data.errors) {console.log(data.mml)}
// will produce:
//
});
`
mathjax-node exports three methods, config, start, typeset.
The config method is used to set _global_ configuration options. Its default options are
`javascript`
{
displayMessages: false, // determines whether Message.Set() calls are logged
displayErrors: true, // determines whether error messages are shown on the console
undefinedCharError: false, // determines whether "unknown characters" (i.e., no glyph in the configured fonts) are saved in the error array
extensions: '', // a convenience option to add MathJax extensions
fontURL: 'https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/mathjax/2.7.2/fonts/HTML-CSS', // for webfont urls in the CSS for HTML output
paths: {}, // configures custom path variables (e.g., for third party extensions, cf. test/config-third-party-extensions.js)
MathJax: { } // standard MathJax configuration options, see https://docs.mathjax.org for more detail.
}
Note. Changes to these options require a restart of the API using the start() method (see below).
The start method start (and restarts) mathjax-node. This allows reconfiguration.
Note. This is done automatically when typeset is first called (see below).
The typeset method is the main method of mathjax-node. It expects a configuration object options and optionally a callback.
If no callback is passed, it will return a Promise.
Once called, typeset can be called repeatedly and will optionally store information across calls (see state below).
The following are the default input options.
`javascript
{
ex: 6, // ex-size in pixels
width: 100, // width of container (in ex) for linebreaking and tags
useFontCache: true, // use
math: "", // the math string to typeset
format: "TeX", // the input format (TeX, inline-TeX, AsciiMath, or MathML)
xmlns: "mml", // the namespace to use for MathML
html: false, // generate HTML output
htmlNode: false, // generate HTML output as jsdom node
css: false, // generate CSS for HTML output
mml: false, // generate MathML output
mmlNode: false, // generate MathML output as jsdom node
svg: false, // generate SVG output
svgNode: false, // generate SVG output as jsdom node
speakText: true, // add textual alternative (for TeX/asciimath the input string, for MathML a dummy string)
state: {}, // an object to store information from multiple calls (e.g.,
timeout: 10 * 1000, // 10 second timeout before restarting MathJax
}
`
mathjax-node returns two objects to Promise.resolve or callback: a result object and the original input options.
The result object will contain (at most) the following structure:
`javascript
{
errors: // an array of MathJax error messages if any errors occurred
mml: // a string of MathML markup if requested
mmlNode: // a jsdom node of MathML markup if requested
html: // a string of HTML markup if requested
htmlNode: // a jsdom node of HTML markup if requested
css: // a string of CSS if HTML was requested
svg: // a string of SVG markup if requested
svgNode: // a jsdom node of SVG markup if requested
style: // a string of CSS inline style if SVG requested
height: // a string containing the height of the SVG output if SVG was requested
width: // a string containing the width of the SVG output if SVG was requested
speakText: // a string of speech text if requested
state: { // the state object (if useGlobalCache or equationNumbers is set)
glyphs: // a collection of glyph data
defs : // a string containing SVG def elements
AMS: {
startNumber: // the current starting equation number
labels: // the set of labels
IDs: // IDs used in previous equations
}
}
}
`
If the errors array is non-empty, the Promise will reject, and be passed the errors array.
The options contains the configuration object passed to typeset; this can be useful for passing other data along or for identifying which typeset() call is associated with this (callback) call (in case you use the same callback function for more than one typeset()).
mathjax-node v2.0 makes breaking changes as follows:
- [CHANGED] mathjax-node now requires version 6 of Node.js (the minimum used to be Node.js version 4).
- [CHANGED] mathjax-node now uses version 10 of jsdom. Since the jsdom API changed from 9 to 10, that means if you used jsdom in your code that calls mathjax-node, you may need to update how you call jsdom.
mathjax-node v1.0 makes breaking changes to the following features from the pre-releases.
- [CHANGED] lib/mj-single.js has been renamed to lib/main.js (and set as main in package.json, i.e., require('mathjax-node') will load it.lib/mj-page.js
- [REMOVED] (API for processing HTML-fragments) and related CLI toolsbin/`
- [REMOVED] speech-rule-engine integration
- [REMOVED] PNG generation
- [REMOVED] CLI tools in
These features can easily be recreated in separate modules for greater flexibility. For examples, see
- mathjax-node-cli
- mathjax-node-page
- mathjax-node-sre
- mathjax-node-svg2png
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Be sure to also check out other projects on NPM that depend on mathjax-node.