[sysmda_md_url] — the Markdown URL

Outputs the .md URL of a post, and nothing else — no markup, no label, no wrapper.

[sysmda_md_url]
→ https://example.com/my-post.md

Attributes

Attribute	Default	Meaning
id	current post	The post to link to

[sysmda_md_url id="123"]

Why it returns a bare URL

Because that is what makes it safe to drop anywhere a URL is expected:

<a href="[sysmda_md_url]">Read as Markdown</a>

If this shortcode could also return markup — given a label, say — that usage would break the first time someone passed one. It returns a URL, always, so you can build whatever you want around it. For a ready-made link, use [sysmda_md_download] or [sysmda_md_actions] instead.

It never links to a 404

If the post has no Markdown version — the content type is not enabled, it is a draft, it is password-protected, or it uses a non-standard post format — the shortcode outputs nothing at all. Not a broken URL, not a #: an empty string.

That means a template like the one above degrades to an empty href rather than a link to a missing page, and a conditional around it works as you would expect:

$url = do_shortcode( '[sysmda_md_url]' );
if ( '' !== $url ) {
  printf( '<a href="%s">Markdown</a>', esc_url( $url ) );
}

On plain permalinks

If your site uses plain permalinks (?p=123) there is no path to append .md to, so the shortcode returns the ?format=markdown form of the URL instead. It still works; it is just less tidy. See Serving your first Markdown file.

In the Markdown itself

This shortcode — like the other two — is stripped from the Markdown output. Interface elements pointing at the document do not belong inside the document.

Writing about it in an article is fine, though: a shortcode inside a code block or an inline code span is left exactly as typed, so a tutorial showing [sysmda_md_url] keeps its example intact.