title: Table of Contents Extension

Table of Contents
=================

Summary
-------

The Table of Contents extension generates a Table of Contents from a Markdown
document and adds it into the resulting HTML document.

This extension is included in the standard Markdown library.

Syntax
------

By default, all headers will automatically have unique `id` attributes
generated based upon the text of the header. Note this example, in which all
three headers would have the same `id`:

```md
#Header
#Header
#Header
```

Results in:

```html
<h1 id="header">Header</h1>
<h1 id="header_1">Header</h1>
<h1 id="header_2">Header</h1>
```

Place a marker in the document where you would like the Table of Contents to
appear. Then, a nested list of all the headers in the document will replace the
marker. The marker defaults to `[TOC]` so the following document:

```md
[TOC]

# Header 1

## Header 2
```

would generate the following output:

```html
<div class="toc">
  <ul>
    <li><a href="#header-1">Header 1</a></li>
      <ul>
        <li><a href="#header-2">Header 2</a></li>
      </ul>
  </ul>
</div>
<h1 id="header-1">Header 1</h1>
<h1 id="header-2">Header 2</h1>
```

Regardless of whether a `marker` is found in the document (or disabled), the
Table of Contents is available as an attribute (`toc`) on the Markdown class.
This allows one to insert the Table of Contents elsewhere in their page
template. For example:

```pycon
>>> md = markdown.Markdown(extensions=['toc'])
>>> html = md.convert(text)
>>> page = render_some_template(context={'body': html, 'toc': md.toc})
```

Usage
-----

See [Extensions](index.md) for general extension usage. Use `toc` as the name
of the extension.

See the [Library Reference](../reference.md#extensions) for information about
configuring extensions.

The following options are provided to configure the output:

* **`marker`**:
    Text to find and replace with the Table of Contents. Defaults to `[TOC]`.

    Set to an empty string to disable searching for a marker, which may save
    some time, especially on long documents.

* **`title`**:
    Title to insert in the Table of Contents' `<div>`. Defaults to `None`.

* **`anchorlink`**:
    Set to `True` to cause all headers to link to themselves. Default is `False`.

* **`permalink`**:
    Set to `True` or a string to generate permanent links at the end of each header.
    Useful with Sphinx style sheets.

    When set to `True` the paragraph symbol (&para; or "`&para;`") is used as
    the link text. When set to a string, the provided string is used as the link
    text.

* **`baselevel`**:
    Base level for headers. Defaults to `1`.

    The `baselevel` setting allows the header levels to be automatically
    adjusted to fit within the hierarchy of your HTML templates. For example,
    suppose the Markdown text for a page should not contain any headers higher
    than level 3 (`<h3>`). The following will accomplish that:

        :::pycon
        >>>  text = '''
        ... #Some Header
        ... ## Next Level'''
        >>> from markdown.extensions.toc import TocExtension
        >>> html = markdown.markdown(text, extensions=[TocExtension(baselevel=3)])
        >>> print html
        <h3 id="some_header">Some Header</h3>
        <h4 id="next_level">Next Level</h4>'

* **`slugify`**:
    Callable to generate anchors.

    Default: `markdown.extensions.headerid.slugify`

    In order to use a different algorithm to define the id attributes, define  and
    pass in a callable which takes the following two arguments:

    * `value`: The string to slugify.
    * `separator`: The Word Separator.

    The callable must return a string appropriate for use in HTML `id` attributes.

* **`separator`**:
    Word separator. Character which replaces white space in id. Defaults to "`-`".