# | markdownify not working

**URL:** <https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/markdownify-not-working/5527>\
**Category:** support\
**Created:** [February 21, 2017, 12:31am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/markdownify-not-working/5527 "2017-02-21T00:31:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![natorboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bc8723/32.png) [@natorboy](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/natorboy)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2017, 12:31am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/markdownify-not-working/5527/1 "2017-02-21T00:31:54Z")

</div>

So I have a yaml frontmatter parameter that is supposed to take markdown. However as soon as I’m trying to use the | markdownify function I get a Hugo formatting error. | plainify doesn’t work either.

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**Author:** ![rdwatters](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/rdwatters/32/2848_2.png) [@rdwatters](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/rdwatters)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2017, 5:22am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/markdownify-not-working/5527/2 "2017-02-21T05:22:48Z")

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I’ll need more information to help you with this:

1. What’s the error on your terminal?
2. What’s the template where this is being called?
3. (Best option) Do you have a GH or other repo you can point me to?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![natorboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bc8723/32.png) [@natorboy](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/natorboy)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2017, 4:52pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/markdownify-not-working/5527/3 "2017-02-21T16:52:21Z")

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It’s my own theme.

my frontmatter yaml is just very simple:

`text: 'lorem ipsum'`

my template looks like:

`{{ .Params.text | markdownify }}`

So yeah it’s as simple as it gets.  
I can’t provide a public repo I’m sorry.  
The terminal output is:

```
'hugo' errored after 46 ms
[16:24:08] Error: Hugo build failed
    at formatError (/home/test/test/node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js:169:10)

```

I can’t really tell you much more. I am using the Victor Hugo boilerplate. And I never had any issues such as these before. [https://github.com/netlify/victor-hugo](https://github.com/netlify/victor-hugo)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rdwatters](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/rdwatters/32/2848_2.png) [@rdwatters](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/rdwatters)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2017, 5:10pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/markdownify-not-working/5527/4 "2017-02-21T17:10:21Z")

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@natorboy From what I can tell from the console error, this looks like a gulp-related issue. I know that Victor Hugo uses NPM scripts, web pack, and gulp so that you can get up and running from a single command (I’m not a fan of this), so your best bet is to [submit this issue to the Victor Hugo repo directly](https://github.com/netlify/victor-hugo/issues). Netlify advertises Victor Hugo as a continually update starter kit dealie, and from my experience, their customer service is beyond top notch.

I’ve been running multiple sites on Hugo for a couple years now and never had an issue with params, even on the latest dev build.

HTH.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![natorboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bc8723/32.png) [@natorboy](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/natorboy)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2017, 5:15pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/markdownify-not-working/5527/5 "2017-02-21T17:15:02Z")

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@rdwatters thanks for your help! I just now figured out that the issue was with the frontmatter in question being in an object. I had to do it like

`{{ with .Params.testobject.text }}{{ . | markdownify }}{{ end }}`

and now for some reason it works. I dont see why it wouldn’t work with

`{{ .Params.testobject.text | markdownify }}`

tough, but I am also quite new to the hugo templating.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rdwatters](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/rdwatters/32/2848_2.png) [@rdwatters](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/rdwatters)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2017, 5:22pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/markdownify-not-working/5527/6 "2017-02-21T17:22:43Z")

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> [@natorboy](#):
>
> {{ with .Params.testobject.text }}{{ . | markdownify }}{{ end }}

My guess is that you have some files that don’t have `testobject:` in the front matter. It’s good that you’re using `with` to check for the existence of said front matter. 😄

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![natorboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bc8723/32.png) [@natorboy](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/natorboy)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2017, 5:26pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/markdownify-not-working/5527/7 "2017-02-21T17:26:51Z")

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Does Hugo seriously check all the .md files for it’s existence? That’s cool. Thanks mate!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![loadsfaster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ec9cab/32.png) [@loadsfaster](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/loadsfaster)\
**Post date:** [June 3, 2017, 10:24am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/markdownify-not-working/5527/8 "2017-06-03T10:24:44Z")

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I love Hugo and Netlify and Victor Hugo CMS but the compilation errors in Victor Hugo are a nightmare; a [known nightmare](https://github.com/netlify/victor-hugo/issues/26) at that. I was wondering if anyone can give any advice on my error and/or what I should be looking for?

`0 info it worked if it ends with ok 1 verbose cli ['/usr/local/bin/node', '/usr/local/bin/npm', 'start'] 2 info using npm@5.0.1 3 info using node@v6.10.3 4 verbose run-script ['prestart', 'start', 'poststart'] 5 info lifecycle victor-hugo@1.0.0~prestart: victor-hugo@1.0.0 6 silly lifecycle victor-hugo@1.0.0~prestart: no script for prestart, continuing 7 info lifecycle victor-hugo@1.0.0~start: victor-hugo@1.0.0 8 verbose lifecycle victor-hugo@1.0.0~start: unsafe-perm in lifecycle true 9 verbose lifecycle victor-hugo@1.0.0~start: PATH: /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/node-gyp-bin:/Users/life/local/stali/salvatoremalatesta.com.au/node_modules/.bin:/usr/local/heroku/bin:/Users/life/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.2/bin:/Users/life/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.2@global/bin:/Users/life/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.2/bin:/Users/life/.rvm/bin:/Users/life/.rvm/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin 10 verbose lifecycle victor-hugo@1.0.0~start: CWD: /Users/life/local/stali/salvatoremalatesta.com.au 11 silly lifecycle victor-hugo@1.0.0~start: Args: ['-c', 'gulp server'] 12 silly lifecycle victor-hugo@1.0.0~start: Returned: code: 1 signal: null 13 info lifecycle victor-hugo@1.0.0~start: Failed to exec start script 14 verbose stack Error: victor-hugo@1.0.0 start:`gulp server`14 verbose stack Exit status 1 14 verbose stack at EventEmitter.<anonymous> (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/utils/lifecycle.js:283:16) 14 verbose stack at emitTwo (events.js:106:13) 14 verbose stack at EventEmitter.emit (events.js:191:7) 14 verbose stack at ChildProcess.<anonymous> (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/utils/spawn.js:40:14) 14 verbose stack at emitTwo (events.js:106:13) 14 verbose stack at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:191:7) 14 verbose stack at maybeClose (internal/child_process.js:886:16) 14 verbose stack at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (internal/child_process.js:226:5) 15 verbose pkgid victor-hugo@1.0.0 16 verbose cwd /Users/life/local/stali/salvatoremalatesta.com.au 17 verbose Darwin 16.6.0 18 verbose argv "/usr/local/bin/node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "start" 19 verbose node v6.10.3 20 verbose npm v5.0.1 21 error code ELIFECYCLE 22 error errno 1 23 error victor-hugo@1.0.0 start:`gulp server`23 error Exit status 1 24 error Failed at the victor-hugo@1.0.0 start script. 24 error This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above. 25 verbose exit [1, true]`