MediaWiki/Syntax highlighting

Writing good code follows good coding standards. On top of coding standards, syntax highlighting reveals the code making it easier to read (and learn).

There is a Generic Syntax Highlighter or GeSHi for short which is available as a Debian package (sudo apt-get install php-geshi). However, if using Brion Vibber's extension (which is better than this alternate GeSHi Code Tag extension because Brion's just registers one new tag: 'source' and uses the extension parameter passing available since MW 1.5) you will need to get the more recent source code download of GeSHi.

Installation

Download GeSHi source
Download MW extension source
Make sure MW extension includes geshi.php
Add include to LocalSettings

Usage

Just use the <source> tag with the lang parameter to define the programming language. Other optional parameters are avaliable too. See the example below.

Parameters

lang: Defines the language
line: Corresponds to enable_line_numbers method on GeSHi
start: Corresponds to start_line_numbers_at method on GeSHi
enclose: Corresponds to set_header_type method on GeSHi
strict: Corresponds to enable_strict_mode method on GeSHi

The effect and usage of these parameters can be consulted in GeSHi's documentation.

Since r22246, you can override the colors using [[MediaWiki:GeSHi.css]].

Example

 1 <?php
 2 if( !defined( 'MEDIAWIKI' ) )
 3         die();
 4 
 5 $wgExtensionFunctions[] = 'syntaxHighlightSetup';
 6 $wgExtensionCredits['parserhook']['SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi'] = array(
 7         'name'          => 'SyntaxHighlight',
 8         'author'        => 'Brion Vibber',
 9         'description'   => 'Provides syntax highlighting using [http://qbnz.com/highlighter/ GeSHi Higlighter]',
10         'url'           => 'http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi',
11 );
12 $wgHooks['LoadAllMessages'][] = 'syntaxHighlightLoadMessages';
13 
14 function syntaxHighlightSetup() {
15         global $wgParser;
16         $wgParser->setHook( 'source', 'syntaxHighlightHook' );
17 }
18 
19 ?>

Supported Languages

These are the languages known by GeSHi that can be used in the lang parameter:

actionscript
ada
apache
applescript
asm
asp
autoit
bash
blitzbasic
bnf
c
caddcl
cadlisp
cfdg
cfm
cpp-qt
cpp
csharp
css-gen.cfg
css

c_mac
d
delphi
diff
div
dos
eiffel
fortran
freebasic
gml
groovy
html4strict
idl
ini
inno
io
java
java5
javascript
latex

lisp
lua
matlab
mirc
mpasm
mysql
nsis
objc
ocaml-brief
ocaml
oobas
oracle8
pascal
perl
php-brief
php
plsql
python
qbasic
reg

robots
ruby
sas
scheme
sdlbasic
smalltalk
smarty
sql
tcl
text
thinbasic
tsql
vb
vbnet
vhdl
visualfoxpro
winbatch
xml
z80

See documentation for the latest list of additions

Documentation

See http://qbnz.com/highlighter/geshi-doc.html for the extensive documentation. GeSHi is used in a number of other software projects like

Dokuwiki - An advanced wiki engine
gtk.php.net - Their manual uses GeSHi for syntax highlighting
WordPress - A powerful blogging system*
PHP-Fusion - A constantly evovling CMS
SQL Manager - A Postgres DBAL
Mambo - A popular open source CMS
MediaWiki - A leader in Wikis*
TikiWiki - A megapowerful Wiki/CMS
TikiPro - Another powerful Wiki based on Tikiwiki
RWeb - A site-building tool

If you want to use it in OASIS projects besides this wiki, then start with the documentation.