The CodeHilite Extension adds code/syntax highlighting to standard Python-Markdown code blocks using Pygments.
This extension is included in the Markdown library.
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.
Note: The css and/or javascript is not included as part of this extension but shall always be provided by the end user.
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.
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
CodeHilite is completely backward compatible so that if a code block is
encountered that does not define a language, the block is simple wrapped in
<pre>
tags and output. Note: one exception would be that the Pygments
highlighting engine will try to guess the language. Upon failure, the same
behavior will happen as described here.
# 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>
From the Python interpreter:
>>> html = markdown.markdown(text, ['codehilite'])
If you want every code block to have line numbers, even when using colons
(:::
) for language identification, the setting force_linenos
is available
to do so.
>>> html = markdown.markdown(text,
... ['codehilite(force_linenos=True)']
... )
If you want to prevent Pygments from guessing the language, only highlighting
blocks when you explicitly request it, set the guess_lang
setting to 'False'.
>>> html = markdown.markdown(text,
... ['codehilite(guess_lang=False)']
... )