Extension:SyntaxHighlight
 Release status: stable |
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| Implementation | Tag |
| Description | Allows source code to be syntax highlighted on wiki pages |
| Author(s) |
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| Latest version | continuous updates |
| Compatibility policy | Master maintains backward compatibility. |
| MediaWiki | 1.25+ |
| Database changes | No |
| License | GNU General Public License 2.0 or later |
| Download | README |
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<syntaxhighlight> |
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| Public wikis using | 11,760 (Ranked 8th) |
| Translate the SyntaxHighlight extension | |
| Issues | Open tasks · Report a bug |
The SyntaxHighlight extension, formerly known as SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi, provides rich formatting of source code using the <syntaxhighlight> tag.
It is powered by the Pygments library and supports hundreds of different programming languages and file formats.
Like the <pre> and <poem> tags, the text is rendered exactly as it was typed, preserving any white space.
The SyntaxHighlight extension does not work on wiki installations hardened using Hardened-PHP due to the lack of proc_open, shell_exec and other functions.
See task T250763.
The <syntaxhighlight> tag has become expensive since 1.39 for 5,000 or some other extreme amount of syntaxhighlight tags in a single page such as for Wikibooks.
Increase webserver timeout value in environments in extreme cases.
(See task T316858.)
Usage
Once installed, you can use "syntaxhighlight" tags on wiki pages. For example,
def quick_sort(arr):
less = []
pivot_list = []
more = []
if len(arr) <= 1:
return arr
else:
pass
is the result of the following wikitext markup:
<syntaxhighlight lang="python" line>
def quick_sort(arr):
less = []
pivot_list = []
more = []
if len(arr) <= 1:
return arr
else:
pass
</syntaxhighlight>
In older versions (before MediaWiki 1.16), the extension used the tag <source>.
This is still supported, but is deprecated. <syntaxhighlight> should be used instead.
Styling
If the displayed code is too big, you can adjust it by putting the following into the MediaWiki:Common.css page in your wiki (create it if it does not exist):
/* CSS placed here will be applied to all skins */
.mw-highlight pre {
font-size: 90%;
}
Encasing code blocks in borders can be done by inserting a line like border: 1px dashed blue; in the section above.
Control over font family used can also be exercised by inserting a line like font-family: "Courier New", monospace; into the section above.
Syntax highlighting error category
The extension adds pages that have a bad lang attribute in a <syntaxhighlight> tag to a tracking category.
The message key MediaWiki:syntaxhighlight-error-category determines the category name; on this wiki it is Category:Pages with syntax highlighting errors.
The most common error that leads to pages being tagged with this category is a <syntaxhighlight> tag with no lang attribute at all, because older versions of this extension supported the definition of $wgSyntaxHighlightDefaultLang.
These can typically either be replaced with <pre>, or lang="bash" or lang="text" can be added to the tag.
The category may also be added, and the content will not be highlighted, if there are more than 1000 lines or more than 100 kB text.[1]
Parameters
lang
The lang="name" attribute defines what lexer should be used.
The language affects how the extension highlights the source code.
See the section #Supported languages for details of supported languages.
def quick_sort(arr):
less = []
<syntaxhighlight lang="python">
...
</syntaxhighlight>
Specifying an invalid or unknown name will tag the page with a tracking category. See the section #Syntax highlighting error category in this page for details.
line
The line attribute enables line numbers.
def quick_sort(arr):
less = []
<syntaxhighlight lang="python" line>
...
</syntaxhighlight>
start
The start attribute (in combination with line) defines the first line number of the code block.
For example, line start="55" will make line numbering start at 55.
def quick_sort(arr):
less = []
<syntaxhighlight lang="python" line start="55">
...
</syntaxhighlight>
highlight
The highlight attribute specifies one or more lines that should be marked (by highlighting those lines with a different background color).
You can specify multiple line numbers separated by commas (for example, highlight="1,4,8") or ranges using two line numbers and a hyphen (for example, highlight="5-7").
start attribute.def quick_sort(arr):
less = []
pivot_list = []
more = []
if len(arr) <= 1:
return arr
is the result of
<syntaxhighlight lang="python" line start="3" highlight="1,5-7">
...
</syntaxhighlight>
inline
| MediaWiki version: | ≥ 1.26 |
The attribute indicates that the source code should be inline as part of a paragraph (as opposed to being its own block). This option is available starting with MediaWiki 1.26.
class="nowrap" (on those wikis that support it; see below) or style="white-space:nowrap".For example:
The following lambda x: x * 2 is a lambda expression in Python.
Is the result of:
The following <syntaxhighlight lang="python" inline>lambda x: x * 2</syntaxhighlight> is a [[w:Lambda (programming)|lambda expression]] in Python.
class
When inline is used, class="nowrap" (on those wikis that support it; not on MediaWiki itself) specifies that line breaks should not occur at spaces within the code block.
For example:
Without class="nowrap":
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxlambda x: x * 2xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
With style="white-space:nowrap":
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxlambda x: x * 2xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
style
The style attribute allows CSS attributes to be included directly.
This is equivalent to enclosing the block in a <div> (not <span>) tag.
The tab‑size attribute cannot be specified this way; it requires an enclosing <span> tag as described below under Advanced.
For example:
def quick_sort(arr):
less = []
pivot_list = []
more = []
if len(arr) <= 1:
return arr
else:
pass
Is the result of:
<syntaxhighlight lang="python" style="border: 3px dashed blue;">
def quick_sort(arr):
less = []
pivot_list = []
more = []
if len(arr) <= 1:
return arr
else:
pass
</syntaxhighlight>
copy
| MediaWiki version: | ≥ 1.43 |
The copy attribute adds a button link that copies the content to the clipboard when clicked.
inline attribute. If both are specified, copy will be ignored.For example:
def quick_sort(arr):
less = []
Is the result of:
<syntaxhighlight lang="python" copy>
def quick_sort(arr):
less = []
</syntaxhighlight>
Supported languages
Pygments provides support for syntax-highlighting hundreds of computer languages and file formats through the various "lexers" included with the library.
In most cases, the lang= attribute to be used with this extension is the lower-case version of the name of the language.
However, many have aliases, or "short names" as they're called in the Pygments documentation; see "Available lexers" for full details.
Some languages previously supported by GeSHi have been mapped to Pygments lexers; see SyntaxHighlightGeSHiCompat.php for details.
As of January 2020, the full list of languages supported by Pygments is:
Programming languages
- ActionScript
- Ada
- Agda (incl. literate)
- Alloy
- AMPL
- ANTLR
- APL
- AppleScript
- Assembly (various)
- Asymptote
- Augeas
- AutoIt
- Awk
- BBC Basic
- Befunge
- BlitzBasic
- Boa
- Boo
- Boogie
- BrainFuck
- C, C++ (incl. dialects like Arduino)
- C#
- Chapel
- Charm++ CI
- Cirru
- Clay
- Clean
- Clojure
- CoffeeScript
- ColdFusion
- Common Lisp
- Component Pascal
- Coq
- Croc (MiniD)
- Cryptol (incl. Literate Cryptol)
- Crystal
- Cypher
- Cython
- D
- Dart
- DCPU-16
- Delphi
- Dylan (incl. console)
- Eiffel
- Elm
- Emacs Lisp
- Erlang (incl. shell sessions)
- Ezhil
- Factor
- Fancy
- Fantom
- Fennel
- FloScript
- Forth
- Fortran
- FreeFEM++
- F#
- GAP
- Gherkin (Cucumber)
- GLSL shaders
- Golo
- Gosu
- Groovy
- Haskell (incl. Literate Haskell)
- HLSL
- HSpec
- Hy
- IDL
- Idris (incl. Literate Idris)
- Igor Pro
- Io
- Jags
- Java
- JavaScript
- Jasmin
- Jcl
- Julia
- Kotlin
- Lasso (incl. templating)
- Limbo
- LiveScript
- Logtalk
- Logos
- Lua
- Mathematica
- Matlab
- Modelica
- Modula-2
- Monkey
- Monte
- MoonScript
- Mosel
- MuPad
- NASM
- Nemerle
- NesC
- NewLISP
- Nimrod
- Nit
- Notmuch
- NuSMV
- Objective-C
- Objective-J
- Octave
- OCaml
- Opa
- OpenCOBOL
- ParaSail
- Pawn
- PHP
- Perl 5
- Pike
- Pony
- PovRay
- PostScript
- PowerShell
- Praat
- Prolog
- Python (incl. console sessions and tracebacks)
- QBasic
- Racket
- Raku a.k.a. Perl 6
- REBOL
- Red
- Redcode
- Rexx
- Ride
- Ruby (incl. irb sessions)
- Rust
- S, S-Plus, R
- Scala
- Scdoc
- Scheme
- Scilab
- SGF
- Shell scripts (Bash, Tcsh, Fish)
- Shen
- Silver
- Slash
- Slurm
- Smalltalk
- SNOBOL
- Snowball
- Solidity
- SourcePawn
- Stan
- Standard ML
- Stata
- Swift
- Swig
- SuperCollider
- Tcl
- Tera Term language
- TypeScript
- TypoScript
- USD
- Unicon
- Urbiscript
- Vala
- VBScript
- Verilog, SystemVerilog
- VHDL
- Visual Basic.NET
- Visual FoxPro
- Whiley
- Xtend
- XQuery
- Zeek
- Zephir
- Zig
Template languages
- Angular templates
- Cheetah templates
- ColdFusion
- Django / Jinja templates
- ERB (Ruby templating)
- Evoque
- Genshi (the Trac template language)
- Handlebars
- JSP (Java Server Pages)
- Liquid
- Myghty (the HTML::Mason based framework)
- Mako (the Myghty successor)
- Slim
- Smarty templates (PHP templating)
- Tea
- Twig
Other markup
- Apache config files
- Apache Pig
- BBCode
- CapDL
- Cap'n Proto
- CMake
- Csound scores
- CSS
- Debian control files
- Diff files
- Dockerfiles
- DTD
- EBNF
- E-mail headers
- Extempore
- Flatline
- Gettext catalogs
- Gnuplot script
- Groff markup
- Hexdumps
- HTML
- HTTP sessions
- IDL
- Inform
- INI-style config files
- IRC logs (irssi style)
- Isabelle
- JSGF notation
- JSON, JSON-LD
- Lean theorem prover
- Lighttpd config files
- Linux kernel log (dmesg)
- LLVM assembly
- LSL scripts
- Makefiles
- MoinMoin/Trac Wiki markup
- MQL
- MySQL
- NCAR command language
- Nginx config files
- Nix language
- NSIS scripts
- Notmuch
- POV-Ray scenes
- Puppet
- QML
- Ragel
- Redcode
- ReST
- Roboconf
- Robot Framework
- RPM spec files
- Rql
- RSL
- Scdoc
- SPARQL
- SQL, also MySQL, SQLite
- Squid configuration
- TADS 3
- Terraform
- TeX
- Thrift
- TOML
- Treetop grammars
- USD (Universal Scene Description)
- Varnish configs
- VGL
- Vim Script
- WDiff
- Windows batch files
- XML
- XSLT
- YAML
- Windows Registry files
- ansys
- apdl
- asc
- gcode
- golang === go
- gsql
- jslt
- julia-repl
- kuin
- meson
- nestedtext
- nodejsrepl
- nt
- omg-idl
- output
- pem
- procfile
- pwsh
- smithy
- teal
- thingsdb
- ti
- wast
- wat
Lexers previously supported by GeSHi
Below is a partial list of languages that GeSHi could highlight, with strike-through for languages no longer supported after the switch to Pygments.
| Lexers previously supported by GeSHi | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Installation
python3) to be installed on the server. This is a change from the version bundled with MediaWiki 1.30, which used Python version 2 (python). Note that the python3 binary must be installed in the execution PATH of the PHP interpreter.- Download and move the extracted
SyntaxHighlight_GeSHifolder to yourextensions/directory.
Developers and code contributors should install the extension from Git instead, using:cd extensions/
git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/mediawiki/extensions/SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi - Only when installing from Git, run Composer to install PHP dependencies, by issuing
composer install --no-devin the extension directory. (See task T173141 for potential complications.) - Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php file:
wfLoadExtension( 'SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi' );
- In Linux, set execute permissions for the pygmentize binary. You can use an FTP client or the following shell command to do so:
chmod a+x /path/to/extensions/SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi/pygments/pygmentize
Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.
Vagrant installation:
- If using Vagrant, install with
vagrant roles enable syntaxhighlight --provision
So, after installation from Git change to the directory containing the extension e.g.
"../extensions/SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi/" and run composer install --no-dev, or when updating: composer update --no-dev.Alternatively as well as preferably add the line
"extensions/SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi/composer.json" to the "composer.local.json" file in the root directory of your wiki like e.g.
{
"extra": {
"merge-plugin": {
"include": [
"extensions/SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi/composer.json"
]
}
}
}
composer update --no-dev. Voilà! Warning: | When uploading the extension via FTP be sure to upload the pygments/pygmentize file with the transfer type binary. |
Configuration
$wgSyntaxHighlightMaxLines and $wgSyntaxHighlightMaxBytes (optional): For performance reasons, blobs or pages (JS, Lua and CSS pages) larger than these values will not be highlighted. (since 1.40)
- Linux
$wgPygmentizePath(optional): Absolute path to pygmentize of the Pygments package. The extension bundles the Pygments package and$wgPygmentizePathpoints to the bundled version by default, but you can point to a different version, if you want to. For example:$wgPygmentizePath = "/usr/local/bin/pygmentize";.
- Windows
- If you are hosting your MediaWiki on a Windows machine, you have to set the path for the Pygmentize.exe
$wgPygmentizePath = "c:\\Python27\\Scripts\\pygmentize.exe";- If there is no
pygmentize.exeruneasy_install Pygmentsfrom command line inside theScriptsfolder to generate the file.
- If there is no
If you are using the bundled pygmentize binary (extensions/SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi/pygments/pygmentize), make sure your webserver is permitted to execute it.
If your host does not allow you to add executables to your web directory, install python-pygments and add $wgPygmentizePath = pygmentize to LocalSettings.php.
- Troubleshooting
After updating to MediaWiki v1.26 and above, some users started reporting problems with the extension. There could be cases, when some languages, such as Lua might not get highlighted and by turning on debugging, MediaWiki would throw out the error, Notice: Failed to invoke Pygments: /usr/bin/env: python3: No such file or directory.
- Try pointing
$wgPygmentizePathinLocalSettings.phptowards an external pygmentize binary.
- In shared hosting environments with cPanel, this can be done by setting up a new Python application through the "Setup Python App" menu, and activating the virtual environment for the app through SSH (
source /virtualenv/python/3.5/bin/activate). After this, the Pygments module can be added to the Python app, for which navigate to the virtual environment path (cd virtualenv/python/3.5/bin/), download and install Pygments (./pip install Pygments) and then activate the module by adding "Pygments" under the "Existing applications" section of the "Setup Python App" menu. This will create the required file at path:virtualenv/python/3.5/bin/pygmentize
- In shared hosting environments with cPanel, this can be done by setting up a new Python application through the "Setup Python App" menu, and activating the virtual environment for the app through SSH (
- See phab:T128993 on this for further suggestions and information.
- SELinux can also prevent the extension from running with an error similar to
type=AVC msg=audit(1609598265.169:225924): avc: denied { execute } for pid=2360888 comm="bash" name="pygmentize" dev="dm-0" ino=50814399 scontext=system_u:system_r:httpd_t:s0 tcontext=unconfined_u:object_r:httpd_user_content_t:s0 tclass=file permissive=0in your audit.log. This can be allowed withsetsebool -P httpd_unified 1 - In earlier versions of this extension, Windows would sometimes fail with an _Py_HashRandomization_Init error. This was a bug with the Windows environment not being passed to python executions. A fix was released in 1.40, with backports to 1.38 and 1.39.
VisualEditor integration
The plugin enables direct editing with VisualEditor.
A popup is opened when a user wants to edit syntaxhighlight sections.
For this to work, VisualEditor must be installed and configured from the latest Git version, same for Parsoid.
The feature may not work with older Parsoid versions.
See Extension:SyntaxHighlight/VisualEditor for details
Advanced
Unlike the <pre> and <code> tags, HTML character entities such as need not (and should not) have the & character escaped as &.
Like the <pre> tag but unlike the <code> tag, tags within the range (other than its own closing tag) need not have the < symbol escaped as <, nor does wikitext need to be escaped with a <nowiki> tag.
Furthermore, while <pre> assumes tab stops every 8 characters and renders tabs using actual spaces when the rendered text is copied, <syntaxhighlight> uses 4-space tab stops (except Internet Explorer, which uses 8) and preserves the tab characters in the rendered text; the latter may be changed using an enclosing <span style="-moz-tab-size: nn; -o-tab-size: nn; tab-size: nn;"> tag (not <div>, and not using its own style attribute).
The -moz- prefix is required for Firefox (from version 4.0 to version 90), and the -o- prefix is required for Opera (from version 10.60 to version 15).[2]
(Note that the wiki editing box assumes 8-space tabs.)
This applies only to actual saved pages; previews generated through an edit box or Special:ExpandTemplates may differ.
See also
- Pygments — Python syntax highlighter
- Extensions dependent on this one:
- Extension:SyntaxHighlightPages — highlights pages based on title suffixes.
- Alternative extensions:
- Extension:Highlightjs Integration — syntax highlighter that uses HighlightJS library (includes support for some languages that are missing from Pygments, such as Maxima).
- Extension:GoogleCodePrettify — syntax highlighter that uses Google Code Prettify library.
- Extension:ExternalContent — embed external content, such as code from GitHub, GitLab, and Bitkeeper repos with automatic rendering of Markdown files; and using syntax highlighting via the Prism.js library for nearly 300 supported languages. Content indexed by CirrusSearch
Footnotes
 | This extension is being used on one or more Wikimedia projects. This probably means that the extension is stable and works well enough to be used by such high-traffic websites. Look for this extension's name in Wikimedia's CommonSettings.php and InitialiseSettings.php configuration files to see where it's installed. A full list of the extensions installed on a particular wiki can be seen on the wiki's Special:Version page. |
 | This extension is included in the following wiki farms/hosts and/or packages: This is not an authoritative list. Some wiki farms/hosts and/or packages may contain this extension even if they are not listed here. Always check with your wiki farms/hosts or bundle to confirm. |
- Extensions bundled with MediaWiki 1.21
- Stable extensions
- Tag extensions
- GPL licensed extensions
- Extensions in Wikimedia version control
- ApiFormatHighlight extensions
- ContentGetParserOutput extensions
- ParserFirstCallInit extensions
- ResourceLoaderRegisterModules extensions
- SoftwareInfo extensions
- All extensions
- Extensions requiring Composer with git
- Extensions used on Wikimedia
- Extensions included in BlueSpice
- Extensions included in Canasta
- Extensions available as Debian packages
- Extensions included in Fandom
- Extensions included in Miraheze
- Extensions included in MyWikis
- Extensions included in ProWiki
- Extensions included in semantic::core
- Extensions included in ShoutWiki
- Extensions included in wiki.gg
- Extensions included in WikiForge
- Syntax highlighting extensions
- GeSHi extensions
- Extensions with VisualEditor support