Hedgedoc to Discord

What does it do?

• Monitors Markdown content from multiple configurable URLs such as HedgeDoc, or any markdown source (designed and tested for HedgeDoc).
• Pushes polled markdown content to a Discord webhook.
• Checks for changes by comparing content against a local copy of the last known version (stored in /data/state.json).
• Automatically updates the Discord message when the Markdown changes.
• Logs markdown source errors (timeouts, HTTP errors, etc.) in the specified timezone (stored in /data/error.log).
• Truncates Markdown content to 2000 characters to comply with Discord limits.
• Recreates manually deleted messages on the next content change.

Why use this?

• Collaborate with your staff to manage rules for your Discord server.
• Ensure your community always sees the most up-to-date information.
• It's not a bot, it uses webhooks, so it’s lightweight and easy to deploy.

Requirments

• NodeJS 20+
• NPM

How to set up

Start by downloading the code. You can clone the repository by running:

git clone https://github.com/SophiaAtkinson/discord-hedgedoc-md.git

Or download the ZIP directly from GitHub.

Once downloaded, navigate into the directory:

cd discord-hedgedoc-md

Next, install the dependencies:

npm install

Copy the example config to get started:

cp config.json.example config.json

Then open config.json in your preferred text editor.

Config options

• timezone: Set your preferred timezone. If left blank, it defaults to UTC.
• pollingRate: Recommended to keep at the default 30000 (30 seconds). You can increase this, but don’t go lower.
• webhooks: For each webhook, you’ll need:
  • name: A name to identify it.
  • markdownURL: The URL to fetch markdown from (e.g., https://example.com/s/example/download).
  • webhookURL: Your Discord webhook URL (found under Channel Settings → Integrations → Webhooks).

If you only want one webhook, just include one in the array. If you want more, add additional entries.

Once configured, start the tool:

npm run

Or:

node index.js

That’s it! The messages should now appear in Discord. If you run into issues, feel free to open an issue on GitHub.

Run it 24/7

You can use pm2 or Docker to keep the service running continuously.

Notes

• Timezones must be in TZ format
• Markdown must be supported by Discord’s Markdown guide
• Your markdown source should not have aggressive rate limiting.
• Do not set the polling rate below 30 seconds (30000ms), as too many requests might be considered API abuse.
• With the recommended max of 20 webhook sources, the tool should not exceed 128MB of RAM. If it does, please open an issue.
• If you are using Hedgedoc, you must provide /download to the end of you published content!