FlatList: Plaintext lists made presentable

Created on Tuesday, January 1, 2013.
Filed under Software, Web Backend.
 

FlatList is a PHP script that converts your text-only checklist into a pretty list with graphical checkboxes and everything!

 

All I wanted to do was maintain a checklist of stuff on my own computer, then have it displayed on the internet in a readable format. There are sites that let you maintain online checklists, but I couldn’t find one that had free read-only display to unregistered visitors.

FlatList is a quick PHP hack that reads your Markdown-formatted checklist from a URL, then transforms it into a pretty list with graphical checkboxes and everything!

There is a live demo of FlatList that you can look at, and you can also look at the raw list file to see what it looks like before prettifying, and the syntax you’’re expected to use with it.

Let me download it!

Download FlatList (requires a server with PHP).

Super quick syntax guide

  • - [] or - [ ] adds an empty checkbox.
  • - [-] adds a cancelled (greyed-out) checkbox.
  • - [x] or - [X] adds a filled (crossed-out) checkbox.
  • Add indentations (via Tab) to indent the list items.
  • Add # characters at the start of a list item to make it a title.
    • One # makes a level one title, Two # characters makes a level two title, and so on (maximum of five levels).
  • See the Markdown Syntax Page for more details about text formatting (bold, italics, links and so on).
  • The raw list file of the live demo is an excellent example of usage.

What’s the best way to use FlatList?

I use FlatList to present the lists that I maintain in my note-taking software, Scratchpad. Scratchpad saves the list to my local Public folder in DropBox, which automatically syncs it to the internet. FlatList is pointed to the public link of the list, and it downloads and displays it to visitors.

Changelog

v1

That's all there is, there isn't any more.
© Desi Quintans, 2002 – 2022.