Hashtags as numbered list indicators in the response of Jira ticket description

Question

I'm using the Jira API to get descriptions of specific tickets. I found that if a description has a numbered list, it shows up as hashtags in the API response. This makes it tricky when I want to use the response in markdown because hashtags usually turn into headers.

Do you know why it's set up this way? And do you have any ideas to make it easier to fix?

I would expect numbered list being returned with numbers instead of hashtags.

Dan Ross · Answer

I just wanted to say thank you for coming back to share what you found. This is the same issue I'm seeing and I better understand why the UI and API weren't behaving as I expected.

Thanks!

Dankenmcload · Answer

I figured out that Jira uses a special way to format text called wiki syntax. For example, numbered lists are made with hashtags. So, to make things easier, we can use a tool called jira2md (https://www.npmjs.com/package/jira2md), which converts Jira's formatting into markdown.