Custom Renderer

The renderer converts markdown text to HTML on the server side. It's used by the template tag/filter and the preview API endpoint.

Default Renderer

DefaultRenderer uses python-markdown with the extra, codehilite, and toc extensions. If python-markdown is not installed, it falls back to HTML-escaped plaintext.

Creating a Custom Renderer

Subclass BaseRenderer and implement the render method:

from django_markdown_widget import BaseRenderer

class MarkdownItRenderer(BaseRenderer):
    def render(self, markdown_text: str) -> str:
        if not markdown_text:
            return ""
        import markdown_it
        md = markdown_it.MarkdownIt()
        return md.render(markdown_text)

With Sanitization

For user-generated content, sanitize the output:

import nh3
from django_markdown_widget import BaseRenderer

class SafeRenderer(BaseRenderer):
    def render(self, markdown_text: str) -> str:
        if not markdown_text:
            return ""
        import markdown
        html = markdown.markdown(markdown_text, extensions=["extra"])
        return nh3.clean(html)

Register Your Renderer

MD_EDITOR = {
    "RENDERER_CLASS": "myapp.renderers.MarkdownItRenderer",
}

The class is loaded via django.utils.module_loading.import_string, so any importable Python path works.