# read.read_as_markdown()


Read a document from a path or URL and convert it to Markdown.


Usage

``` python
read.read_as_markdown(
    uri, html_extract_selectors=None, html_zap_selectors=None, *args, **kwargs
)
```


This is raghilda's entry point for turning a source into a [MarkdownDocument](document.MarkdownDocument.md#raghilda.document.MarkdownDocument) ready for chunking. It reads the URI (a local file or an HTTP(S) URL) and converts it to Markdown using [MarkItDown](https://github.com/microsoft/markitdown), so it handles far more than Markdown files: HTML pages, PDFs, Word (`.docx`) documents, and the other formats MarkItDown supports are all converted to Markdown. For HTML, it keeps the `<main>` element and removes `<nav>` by default; use the selector arguments to change that.


## Parameters


`uri: str`  
Path or URL of the source to read. Supported forms include:

- `path/to/file.md` (or `.html`, `.pdf`, `.docx`, and so on)
- `http://example.com/page`
- `https://example.com/page`

`html_extract_selectors: list[str] | None = None`  
CSS selectors naming the parts of an HTML page to keep. Defaults to `['main']`.

`html_zap_selectors: list[str] | None = None`  
CSS selectors naming the parts of an HTML page to remove before conversion. Defaults to `['nav']`.


## Returns


`MarkdownDocument`  
The converted content, with `origin` set to `uri` so the source is tracked through chunking and retrieval.


## Examples

Read a local file or a web page. In both cases you get a [MarkdownDocument](document.MarkdownDocument.md#raghilda.document.MarkdownDocument) whose `.content` holds the Markdown text:


``` python
from raghilda.read import read_as_markdown

# Read a local Markdown file
doc = read_as_markdown("path/to/file.md")
print(doc.content)

# Read and convert an HTML page
doc = read_as_markdown("https://example.com/page.html")
print(doc.content)
```