Tiptap Concepts

Structure

ProseMirror works with a strict Schema, which defines the allowed structure of a document. A document is a tree of headings, paragraphs and other elements, called nodes. Marks can be attached to a node, e. g. to emphasize part of it. Commands change that document programmatically.

State

The document is stored in a state. Changes are applied as transactions to the state. The state has details about the current content, cursor position and selection. You can hook into events, for example to alter transactions before they get applied.

Content

The document is stored internally as a ProseMirror node, and can be retrieved as a Tiptap JSON object calling editor.getJSON().

Tiptap JSON is the recommended format for storing the document and working with it. Below is an example Tiptap JSON document:

{
  "type": "doc",
  "content": [
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "attrs": {
        "textAlign": "center"
      },
      "content": [
        { "type": "text", "text": "Hello, " },
        {
          "type": "text",
          "text": "world",
          "marks": [{ "type": "bold" }, { "type": "italic" }]
        },
        { "type": "text", "text": "!" }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

A Tiptap JSON document is a tree of nodes. Some nodes can have children, but only text nodes (those with type: 'text') can contain text. Text nodes and other inline nodes can have marks applied to them. Some nodes and marks can have attributes.

Extensions

Extensions add nodes, marks and/or functionalities to the editor. A lot of those extensions bound their commands to common keyboard shortcuts.

Vocabulary

ProseMirror has its own vocabulary and you’ll stumble upon all those words now and then. Here is a short overview of the most common words we use in the documentation.