CodeHilite¶

Summary¶

The CodeHilite extension adds code/syntax highlighting to standard Python-Markdown code blocks using Pygments.

This extension is included in the standard Markdown library.

Setup¶

You will also need to download and install the Pygments package on your PYTHONPATH. You will need to determine the appropriate CSS classes and create appropriate rules for them, which are either defined in or linked from the header of your HTML templates. See the excellent documentation for more details. If no language is defined, Pygments will attempt to guess the language. When that fails, the code block will display as un-highlighted code.

Syntax¶

The CodeHilite extension follows the same syntax as regular Markdown code blocks, with one exception. The hiliter needs to know what language to use for the code block. There are three ways to tell the hiliter what language the code block contains and each one has a different result.

SheBang (with path)¶

If the first line of the codeblock contains a shebang, the language is derived from that and line numbers are used.

    #!/usr/bin/python
    # Code goes here ...

Will result in:

#!/usr/bin/python
# Code goes here ...

SheBang (no path)¶

If the first line contains a shebang, but the shebang line does not contain a path (a single / or even a space), then that line is removed from the code block before processing. Line numbers are used.

    #!python
    # Code goes here ...

Will result in:

# Code goes here ...

Colons¶

If the first line begins with three or more colons, the text following the colons identifies the language. The first line is removed from the code block before processing and line numbers are not used.

    :::python
    # Code goes here ...

Will result in:

# Code goes here ...

Certain lines can be selected for emphasis with the colon syntax. When using Pygments’ default css styles, emphasized lines have a yellow background. This is useful to direct the reader’s attention to specific lines.

:::python hl_lines="1 3"
# This line is emphasized
# This line isn't
# This line is emphasized

When No Language is Defined¶

CodeHilite is completely backwards compatible so that if a code block is encountered that does not define a language, the block is simply wrapped in <pre> tags and output.

    # Code goes here ...

Will result in:

# Code goes here ...

Lets see the source for that:

<div class="codehilite"><pre><code># Code goes here ...
</code></pre></div>

Usage¶

See Extensions for general extension usage, specify codehilite as the name of the extension.

See the Library Reference for information about configuring extensions.

The following options are provided to configure the output:

• linenums: Use line numbers. Possible values are True for yes, False for no and None for auto. Defaults to None.

  Using True will force every code block to have line numbers, even when using colons (:::) for language identification.

  Using False will turn off all line numbers, even when using SheBangs (#!) for language identification.

• guess_lang: Automatic language detection. Defaults to True.

  Using False will prevent Pygments from guessing the language, and thus highlighting blocks only when you explicitly set the language.

• css_class: Set CSS class name for the wrapper <div> tag. Defaults to codehilite.

• pygments_style: Pygments HTML Formatter Style (ColorScheme). Defaults to default.

  Note

  This is useful only when noclasses is set to True, otherwise the CSS styles must be provided by the end user.

• noclasses: Use inline styles instead of CSS classes. Defaults to False.