tiptap/docs/src/docPages/api/schema.md

Schema

toc

Introduction

Unlike many other editors, tiptap is based on a schema that defines how your content is structured. That enables you to define the kind of nodes that may occur in the document, its attributes and the way they can be nested.

This schema is very strict. You can’t use any HTML element or attribute that is not defined in your schema.

Let me give you one example: If you paste something like This is <strong>important</strong> into tiptap, don’t have any extension that handles strong tags registered, you’ll only see This is important – without the strong tags.

How a schema looks like

The most simple schema for a typical ProseMirror editor is looking something like that:

{
  nodes: {
    document: {
      content: 'block+',
    },
    paragraph: {
      content: 'inline*',
      group: 'block',
      parseDOM: [{ tag: 'p' }],
      toDOM: () => ['p', 0],
    },
    text: {
      group: 'inline',
    },
  },
}

:::warning Out of date This content is written for tiptap 1 and needs an update. :::

We register three nodes here. document, paragraph and text. document is the root node which allows one or more block nodes as children (content: 'block+'). Since paragraph is in the group of block nodes (group: 'block') our document can only contain paragraphs. Our paragraphs allow zero or more inline nodes as children (content: 'inline*') so there can only be text in it. parseDOM defines how a node can be parsed from pasted HTML. toDOM defines how it will be rendered in the DOM.

In tiptap we define every node in its own Extension class instead. This allows us to split logic per node. Under the hood the schema will be merged together.

class Document extends Node {
  name = 'document'
  topNode = true

  schema() {
    return {
      content: 'block+',
    }
  }
}

class Paragraph extends Node {
  name = 'paragraph'

  schema() {
    return {
      content: 'inline*',
      group: 'block',
      parseDOM: [{ tag: 'p' }],
      toDOM: () => ['p', 0],
    }
  }
}

class Text extends Node {
  name = 'text'

  schema() {
    return {
      group: 'inline',
    }
  }
}

Difference between a Node and a Mark

Nodes are like blocks of content, for example paragraphs, headings, code blocks, blockquotes and many more.

Marks can apply a different style to specific parts of text inside a Node. That’s the case for bold, italic or striked text. Links are Marks, too.

Get the underlying ProseMirror schema

There are a few use cases where you need to work with the underlying schema. You’ll need that if you’re using the tiptap collaborative text editing features or if you want to manually render your content as HTML.

Option 1: With an Editor

If you need this on the client side and need an editor instance anyway, it’s available through the editor:

import { Editor } from '@tiptap/core'
import Document from '@tiptap/extension-document'
import Paragraph from '@tiptap/extension-paragraph'
import Text from '@tiptap/extension-text'

const editor = new Editor({
  extensions: [
    Document(),
    Paragraph(),
    Text(),
    // add more extensions here
  ])
})

const schema = editor.schema

Option 2: Without an Editor

If you just want to have the schema without initializing an actual editor, you can use the getSchema helper function. It needs an array of available extensions and conveniently generates a ProseMirror schema for you:

import { getSchema } from '@tiptap/core'
import Document from '@tiptap/extension-document'
import Paragraph from '@tiptap/extension-paragraph'
import Text from '@tiptap/extension-text'

const schema = getSchema([
  Document(),
  Paragraph(),
  Text(),
  // add more extensions here
])

Generate HTML from ProseMirror JSON

If you need to render the content on the server side, for example to render a blog post which was written with tiptap, you’ll probably need a way to do just that without an actual editor instance. That’s what generateHTML() is for. It’s a utility function that renders HTML without an actual editor instance.

:::info Browser-only rendering Import a lightweight implementation from @tiptap/core if you’re using the function in a browser context only. :::

Converting JSON<>HTML with PHP

We needed to do the same thing in PHP at some point, so we published libraries to convert ProseMirror JSON to HTML and vice-versa:

• ueberdosis/prosemirror-php (PHP)
• ueberdosis/prosemirror-to-html (PHP)
• ueberdosis/html-to-prosemirror (PHP)

Node Schema

Content

The content expression for this node, as described in the schema guide. When not given, the node does not allow any content.

Marks

The marks that are allowed inside of this node. May be a space-separated string referring to mark names or groups, "_" to explicitly allow all marks, or "" to disallow marks. When not given, nodes with inline content default to allowing all marks, other nodes default to not allowing marks.

Group

The group or space-separated groups to which this node belongs, which can be referred to in the content expressions for the schema.

Inline

Should be set to true for inline nodes. (Implied for text nodes.)

Atom

Can be set to true to indicate that, though this isn't a leaf node, it doesn't have directly editable content and should be treated as a single unit in the view.

Selectable

Controls whether nodes of this type can be selected as a node selection. Defaults to true for non-text nodes.

Draggable

Determines whether nodes of this type can be dragged without being selected. Defaults to false.

Code

Can be used to indicate that this node contains code, which causes some commands to behave differently.

Defining

Determines whether this node is considered an important parent node during replace operations (such as paste). Non-defining (the default) nodes get dropped when their entire content is replaced, whereas defining nodes persist and wrap the inserted content. Likewise, in inserted content the defining parents of the content are preserved when possible. Typically, non-default-paragraph textblock types, and possibly list items, are marked as defining.

Isolating

When enabled (default is false), the sides of nodes of this type count as boundaries that regular editing operations, like backspacing or lifting, won't cross. An example of a node that should probably have this enabled is a table cell.

Mark Schema

Inclusive

Whether this mark should be active when the cursor is positioned at its end (or at its start when that is also the start of the parent node). Defaults to true.

Excludes

Determines which other marks this mark can coexist with. Should be a space-separated strings naming other marks or groups of marks When a mark is added to a set, all marks that it excludes are removed in the process. If the set contains any mark that excludes the new mark but is not, itself, excluded by the new mark, the mark can not be added an the set. You can use the value "_" to indicate that the mark excludes all marks in the schema.

Defaults to only being exclusive with marks of the same type. You can set it to an empty string (or any string not containing the mark's own name) to allow multiple marks of a given type to coexist (as long as they have different attributes).

Group

The group or space-separated groups to which this mark belongs.

Spanning

Determines whether marks of this type can span multiple adjacent nodes when serialized to DOM/HTML. Defaults to true.