How to use math equations in Docusaurus

One of the challenges I encountered when moving my website from Jekyll to Docusaurus was rendering math equations in some of my blog posts (for example, about the apriori algorithm). In Jekyll, I used MathJax with Liquid to render them. This didn’t work in Docusaurus, so instead I had to use KaTeX.

The Docusaurus docs provide pretty clear instructions on how to use KaTeX in your project. This post is a more straightforward tutorial, and reflects my experience (and issues) specific to my website.

Install the remark-math and rehype-katex plugins (in my case, with npm):

npm install --save remark-math@3 rehype-katex@5 hast-util-is-element@1.1.0
Open your project’s configuration file docusaurus.config.js:
- At the top (right after the lines importing the Docusaurus themes), add the two plugins:
```
   const math = require('remark-math');
   const katex = require('rehype-katex');
```
- In presets, under both the docs and blog categories, add the two plugins:
```
  remarkPlugins: [math],
  rehypePlugins: [katex],
```
  Make sure to add the plugins under all page categories where you want math equations to be rendered. I initially added them only under docs, and was confused why equations were rendered on my About page, but not in blog posts, until I figured out the reason.
- In stylesheets, add the source of KaTeX:
```
    stylesheets: [
      {
      href: 'https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/katex@0.13.24/dist/katex.min.css',
      type: 'text/css',
      integrity:
          'sha384-odtC+0UGzzFL/6PNoE8rX/SPcQDXBJ+uRepguP4QkPCm2LBxH3FA3y+fKSiJ+AmM',
      crossorigin: 'anonymous',
      },
  ],
```
Update the formulas in existing content, considering the differences between Jekyll vs. Docusaurus, and MathJax vs. KaTeX.
- In Jekyll, formulas are wrapped in double $$, whereas for Docusaurus they’re wrapped in single $. Replace all instances of $$ with $.
- If some equations are still not displayed correctly, it might be because they need a different syntax in KaTeX than in MathJax. Check this in the KaTeX docs of suported functions and test the equations in their online editor.