---
title: The md_links helpermd_links helper can help you by providing Markdown
reference-style links (including title attributes) to every page in
your site.
layout: template-logo-medium
---
<%= md_links %>
<% content_for :seeAlso do %>
<% end %>
# <%= current_page.data.title %>
<%= current_page.data.blurb %>
It works by providing a Markdown list of file references for every file used
by your project.
## Example
When called like this:
~~~ erb
<%%= md_links %>
~~~
…the invisible result (made visible here) is this:
~~~ markdown
<%= md_links %>
~~~
Note that most of these files have no useful content; they’re provided in this
sample project _only_ to illustrate this helper’s output.
{:.note}
## Use
Simply call the helper as described above, and then you can link to your other
files very easily using Markdown reference-style links:
~~~ markdown
[Go to the top page of this site.][index]
~~~
[Go to the top page of this site.][index]
## Reference naming
The extension tries to keep the reference as short as possible. If all of your
files are within the root level directory then the references will be very
simple.
Items that are nested deeper will also have simple names if the name
is unique within your project.
Both of those conditions satisfy the vast majority of use cases. However if you
have multiple nested directories that share common image names, then the
references can grow quite long, and **the reference is not guaranteed** to stay
stable as you add more files with the same name in other directories. See the
example above.