WordPress Code Highlight Plugin
Post syntax highlighted code, or simply post code that is not affected by the WordPress text replacement features.
Note: This plugin does not work correctly with WP 2.0. I’ve tried to get it to work, but the new WYSIWYG editor is causing a lot of trouble. I’m leaving the download up for anyone who wants to give it a try (re-release if it you wish. I will link to you from this post if you do). I am working on a new plugin that will let you post code, but in a different manner. I am trying to get something together so at least old posts will still display correctly.
You can Download what I’ve done so far and work from that. The problem is something to do with HTML cleanup, I believe. TinyMCE (or a plugin) cleans up invalid code — I’ve tried to fix it by converting HTML into entities, but the cleanup takes place before my TinyMCE plugin can work on it.
Requirements
- The following PEAR packages are used:
- Whatever packages are not installed on your system, download them from the PEAR website and place them into the PEAR/ directory included with the plugin. PEAR and XML_Parser are two common packages, so the download here only includes the less common Text_Highlighter package.
Release Notes
- 1.0 Beta 3.1.1:
- Fixed security issue that would allow a malicious user to inject SQL into the insert/update queries used for editing/creating new comments/posts.
- This was the only change from Beta 3.1, no bugs have been addressed in this release.
- 1.0 Beta 3.1:
- Added Java to acceptable lang
- 1.0 Beta 3:
- Notes:
- Took out the PEAR base class from the package, now only the Text_Highlighter is included. Since PEAR and the other classes Text_Highlighter relies on are common, I’ve decided to only include the less common Text_Highlighter.
- Updated Text_Highlighter to newest release (now with Java support)
- Fixed XHTML validation bugs.
- Fixed bug with invalid path separator on Mac OSX.
- Fixed bug when posting one line of code, the code is hidden by padding (now forces a height to one-liners).
- Notes:
- 1.0 Beta 2:
- Added filters for comments and excerpts too
- Added filters for *_pre (Input->database) to combat some issues people might have with the balanceTags function
- Fixed the issue with slashes being stripped.
- 1.0 Beta 1: The first release
Note: This plugin is unsupported and does not have any set release schedule. The author (me!) releases it with no guarantees. If lack of support and irregular updates is a problem for you, then you shouldn’t install this plugin. It’s released simply because I like to share my works.
April 16th, 2005 at 7:59 pm
Hmm…when logged in, the plugin gives an preg_replace() error. But it works just fine when not logged in.
preg_replace(): Compilation failed: missing terminating ] for character class at offset 34 in CodeHighlight.php on line 66April 16th, 2005 at 8:00 pm
And now works fine since I posted my comment….
April 16th, 2005 at 8:00 pm
I was hacking it just as you posted that
I didn’t think anyone was going to check it so soon. The download was just updated, btw 
(Changed it from using a pre HTML tag to a BBCode-like [code ] tag.)
April 16th, 2005 at 8:01 pm
Hehe. Figures.
So…are you going to enter it in the WP Plugin Competition?
April 16th, 2005 at 8:05 pm
I don’t think so. It’s a bit too simple I think, especially considering it uses a premade PEAR class.
I never knew about that comp though, maybe I’ll think of something else and enter.
April 17th, 2005 at 5:32 am
If the code in your post is supposed to be highlighted… I’m not seeing it.
April 17th, 2005 at 11:41 am
There were additions to the CSS, try doing a refresh to clear your browsers cache.
April 17th, 2005 at 3:39 pm
Ah there we go, nice.
April 18th, 2005 at 1:23 pm
It doesn’t work for me. Half the page loads and it looks like the script just dies after that.
Any way to debug it?
April 18th, 2005 at 1:41 pm
Chris: Does this plugin and/or Text_Highlighter have an option for where to place the open-curly-bracket, such as just after the function name vs on the next line? (I prefer the latter, fwiw.)
April 18th, 2005 at 1:53 pm
What errors are you getting? Note that this plugin has only been tested on PHP4.3.11. I just re-installed it to make sure I didn’t forget something in the package, and it’s working fine for me.
You mean coding style? The Text_Highlighter class doesn’t care:
[code lang="php"]< ?php
function myfunc($arg) {
echo $arg;
return substr($arg, 5);
}
// Or
function myfunc($arg)
{
echo $arg;
return substr($arg, 5);
}
?>[/code]
April 18th, 2005 at 2:29 pm
Chris: That’s the trouble, no errors show up. The script just dies.
I’m running on PHP 5, maybe that makes a difference?
April 18th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
I just tried it on my PHP5 install, and it worked fine there too. Very weird.
Does the script die on every page load? Or just when posting code? Does it still die when the plugin is deactivated?
April 18th, 2005 at 10:18 pm
Looks good chris
April 25th, 2005 at 1:07 am
I had this problem, too. I am also running on PHP5, but that’s not the issue. My problem was that I am running on Mac OS X — specifically, the problem is this block of code:
[code lang="php"]
if(strpos(strtoupper(PHP_OS), “WIN”) !== false)
define(”INI_PATH_SEPARATOR”, “;”);
else
define(”INI_PATH_SEPARATOR”, “:”);
[/code]
On PHP on OS X,
PHP_OS === 'Darwin'. Since OS X uses Unix-style path separators, this block picks the wrong separator.You actually don’t need this block at all — just use the
PATH_SEPARATORconstant.April 25th, 2005 at 1:11 am
Ref for
PATH_SEPARATORconstant.April 25th, 2005 at 7:51 pm
Ah, right you are Rhett, I did not see that nor did I recall that predefined constant (I knew there must’ve be a more elegant way of doing it!). The fix will be applied in the next posted version.
April 26th, 2005 at 2:29 am
Is there any way to make it so that you don’t need the
April 26th, 2005 at 1:55 pm
Need the…?
May 4th, 2005 at 9:29 am
I like your Code Highlight Plugin and will use it in my site I’m currently building. I notice that the XHTML code produced by your plugin is not valid. Maybe you want to correct it in a future version.
[code]
[/code]
should be
[code][/code]
The CSS is not valid, too. -moz-border-radius is nice but not supported. Also some colors: Orange is #ffa500; Darkred is #8b0000; and Darkblue is #00008b.
Thanks again for this cool plugin.
BTW, a new version of Text_Highlighter is available. With “java” support.
May 7th, 2005 at 7:07 am
Please remove the bad shown codes above. Here I’ll try it again:
/*
[code lang="xml"]
Mit dem Fahrrad von Starnberg im Uhrzeiger-Sinn um den See nach Starnberg.
Unfallstelle König Ludwigs II. bei Perg
[/code]
[code lang="php"]
function popUp($strURL,$strType,$strHeight,$strWidth)
{
$strOptions=”";
if ($strType==”console”) {$strOptions=”resizable,height=”+$strHeight+”,width=”+$strWidth;}
if ($strType==”fixed”) {$strOptions=”status,height=”+$strHeight+”,width=”+$strWidth;}
if ($strType==”elastic”) {$strOptions=”toolbar,menubar,scrollbars,resizable,location,height=”+$strHeight+”,width=”+$strWidth;
window.open($strURL, ‘newWin’, $strOptions);}
}
[/code]
[code lang="xml"]
[/code]
*/
May 7th, 2005 at 7:11 am
I give it up now. I don’t know how to write the code symbols in this comment sheet.
Can anyone send me an eMail showing code example, eventually php and html in 1 script?
Thank you.
E.G.Fluge
schneemann_2000@t-online.de
May 7th, 2005 at 12:55 pm
@fludge: You are doing it correctly. The PHP highlighting is not showing up because the highlighter requires the <php … ?> tags. The last example is a bug, the h-scroller causes the text to be hidden.
@stefan: Yes, I know about the non-validation. I will be fixing this (and the other bugs) today (I am going to leave the -moz-x style’s, however). And thanks for letting me know about the new Text_Highlighter — that will be included with the next release as well.
May 7th, 2005 at 3:01 pm
Hello!
Thx for your reply. I think I was misunderstanding the purpose of Code Highlight. I tried to use it for Wordpress postings containing HTML and/or PHP and/or Java Script …..
I believe I can’t understand its purpose.
E.G. Fluge
May 7th, 2005 at 4:46 pm
No problem fluge. The plugin is to add highlighting so you can show source code in your posts, it is not used to actually execute any code.
May 8th, 2005 at 2:27 pm
Thanks for bugfixing, Chris. Just one note: You forgot to at ‘java’ to the $acceptable_lang variable.
May 16th, 2005 at 2:40 am
Hi, I’m testing it out and finding it working great in general - except the missing ‘java’ flag as stefan mentioned. (and it still says “beta 2″ in the plug in info…) Thanks for the nice work done!.
May 16th, 2005 at 3:15 am
Oh, another suggestion - it seems that if the value specified in ‘lang’ isn’t in $acceptable_lang (as in my case before I added ‘java’ to it myself), the plugin would strip off the lang attribute. Is it possible to keep it as is and simply ignore it if it’s not supported? It would leave the door open for us to specify a language even though it is currently not supported by the highlighter.
May 16th, 2005 at 12:54 pm
Thanks stefan, slipped my mind
jxue: Thanks for the comments. I will sort that bit about stripping lang off when I’ve got some time to work on it. For now, I’ve made the small edit that adds Java to $acceptable_lang and changed the version in plugin info.
June 13th, 2005 at 9:13 pm
Can you tell me what the logic is behind how long the block of code can be before it puts a scrollbar in? I have some that are 5 lines some 6, some more. and then a scrollbar hiding 1 line.
June 16th, 2005 at 5:44 am
Hi,
I tried your plugin today and encountered the following error whenever I include the ‘lang’ attribute in [CODE] -
Warning: Wrong parameter count for preg_match() in /home/vijavin/verbage.net/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/CodeHighlight/PEAR/Text/Highlighter.php
Any ideas?
June 16th, 2005 at 9:33 am
Okay. Figured that one out. My PHP version is 4.3.2 and the version preg_match assumes in the above call is 4.3.3 - the last offset parameter is invalid in my version.
I understand that this is PEAR code, but is there any chance you would know how to make the plugin work with the older preg_match?
June 16th, 2005 at 6:54 pm
If code block is equal to or greater than X lines, apply a fixed height style to generate a vertical scrollbar.
I don’t think so. You will have to dive into the package code (which I would expect to update regularly, especially since it’s in beta). The easiest way I think would be to make a custom function that creates a substring of $str from position $offset, and then uses the substring with the preg_match function, returning it’s value and assigning it’s matches. Then replace the call to preg_replace where the last parameter offset is used (only two that I can see) with your function instead.
June 17th, 2005 at 1:06 pm
Not working for me at all. no colorcoding or scrollbars. I’m using PHP 5.0.4 on MAC OSX, WP 1.5.1.2
I have pear and xml parser and text highighter installed, but didn’t work, So i copied it inside the Pear directory inside codehighlight, doesn’t work either.
Here are the versions
PEAR 1.4.0a12 alpha
XML_Parser 1.2.6 stable
Text_Highlighter 0.6.5 beta
which versions are you using.
June 17th, 2005 at 2:39 pm
The colouring/scrollbars is achieved with CSS. Be sure you have placed the CSS code into your main CSS file, and then do a hard refresh (CTRL+F5) to ensure your browser is not viewing a cached copy.
June 17th, 2005 at 5:15 pm
can u clarify a bit more. u want the content of addcss.css to be added to wp-admin.css. thats the only CSS file in WP directory
June 17th, 2005 at 5:20 pm
plus does it support XML or not. do u have a list of languages that it can support
June 17th, 2005 at 5:41 pm
No, the CSS should be added to your theme’s CSS file (wp-content/themes/yourtheme/style.css). Sorry, the instructions don’t clarify that very well.
Yes, xml is supported. The list of languages is posted below the examples in my post above.
June 18th, 2005 at 2:42 am
OK Its working YAY!!.
Now for some more questions. the $lines variable is for V-scrollbars and not H-scrollbars as the comment states. right?
I have 31 line of code, yet putting 35 in the $lines doesn’t get rid of the V-scrollbars. not even adding 50 gets rid of em.
how do i change the tab size?
how do i change the width of the box?
Does it have line number option.
Sorry for so many question. But i love this plugin, this is the only one for WP that actually worked for me.
June 18th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
Yes, $lines is for the v-scrollers (I’ll have to fix that comment!). I don’t know why it is still showing a vertical scrollbar if $lines is 35, yet you only have 31 lines of code. Lines are counted explicitly and compared against $lines before any force-height styling is produced. Note that even blank lines still count as lines.
Tab size: I believe you can customize tab size, though it is not an option with this plugin. If you’d like, you can look through Text_Highlighter and see if you can find a way.
Line numbers: This is possible with the Text_Highlighter package, but again, not an option with this plugin.
I will add those two options to the next release.
As for box width, that is defined in the CSS (class hl-surround).
June 18th, 2005 at 7:11 pm
thanks for all the help.
ok its firefox problem the scrollbar doesn’t appear on safari browser. I think when ur calculating the box size add a couple of additional pixels to it, so that it works under firefox.
one last question (promise),it ins’t directly related to ur plugin.
How can u protect the code from WYSIWYG (like Xinha and tinyMCE). since the code is wrapped around a [code lang][/code], is there a way i can protect it from being altered. My code is Xml and WYSIWYG also seems to parse it, no matter what i do
June 28th, 2005 at 2:33 pm
Currently you have to update the theme’s CSS file. There is a way to add CSS to the headers on the fly. This is described in the http://asymptomatic.net/wp/2005/02/22/1328/how-to-write-a-simple-wordpress-plugin/ tutorial. The part about CSS can be found on the 5th page of the tutorial.
June 29th, 2005 at 12:48 pm
You can see an other sample in the Search Hilite plugin at http://dev.wp-plugins.org/file/google-highlight/trunk/google-hilite.php
July 5th, 2005 at 4:40 pm
I am experiencing a problem if using the plugin in comments. Instead of the code something like “::HLIGHT_BLOCK_1::” is displayed. This happens since I updated to WP 1.5.1.3 (on two different systems). In posts the plugin works fine. Any idea what is wrong?
July 5th, 2005 at 10:00 pm
::HLIGHT_BLOCK_1::
Hmm, you’re right. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, I will look into this tomorrow.
July 10th, 2005 at 5:27 pm
Test
[code lang="xml"]test[/code]
Test
Okay, so some work and some don’t…
July 17th, 2005 at 5:26 pm
It would be nice if HTML in PHP scripts was highlighted too.
e.g.
::HLIGHT_BLOCK_1::
Cheers.
July 24th, 2005 at 10:43 am
Very nice plugin! Especially for programming geek like us :-p
But some suggestion here. Maybe you can provide an option to replace the default <code> tag to yours when the user press the button on the editor!
Looking forward to your new release with more functions! Really well done, man!
July 30th, 2005 at 8:51 am
I like it!
I modified the plugin a bit and wanted to share my code.
1) I inserted word wrap for the code so that long lines would be cut at 78:
## insert at line 139 in CodeHighlight.php
$wwTxt = split(”\n”,$txt);
$txt = ”;
foreach ($wwTxt as $line) {
$txt .= wordwrap($line, 78, “\n “) . “\n”;
}
unset($wwTxt);
##
2) I made the CSS relative to the used font:
##
.hl-surround {
-moz-border-radius: 0.5em;
background-color: #F9FBFC;
border: 1px solid #C3CED9;
padding: 1em;
margin-bottom: 1em;
overflow: auto;
text-align: left;
}
##
Cheers,
Thomas
August 20th, 2005 at 7:53 am
Hi.
It is very wonderful plug-in.
However, I will look at the following errors, if ‘ is contained in a code.
————
WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the-manual-that-corresponds to-your-MySQL-server version-for-the-right syntax to use near '[/code] ‘, post_excerpt = ”, post_title = ”, post_status = ‘publi’ at line 3]UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = ‘::HLIGHT_BLOCK_1:: ‘and post_excerpt =”, post_title =” and post_status = ‘publish’ and comment_status = ‘open’ and ping_status = ‘open’ and post_author = ‘1′ and post_password = ”and post_name =’20′, to_ping =” and post_modified = ‘ — 2005 - 08 - 20 — 20:31:50 — ‘ — post_modified_gmt — = — ‘ — 2005 - 08 - 20 — 11:31:50 — ‘ — menu_order — = — ‘0′ and post_parent =’0 — ‘ — WHERE ID = 20 Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /srv/www/htdocs/wp-includes/wp-db.php:97) in /srv/www/htdocs/wp-admin/post.php on line 397
————-
September 18th, 2005 at 1:33 pm
Using 1.0 Beta 3.1 but get no color here. My configuration:
php 5.0.4
PEAR 1.3.6
XML_Parser 1.2.4
And I did copy the content of add_css.css to my themes css.
Actually it’s not ‘no color’. It’s all default color. If I view the HTML source from my browser, I only see hl-default and hl-main, no other classes. And I got no errer, like missing PEAR/Parser functions etc, when loading the page.
Does anybody have similar experience?
September 20th, 2005 at 2:09 am
Sorry for the last comment. My bad. Actually I enclosed a slice of php code without so that the parser doesn’t recognize it. But this plugin can recognize it.
September 28th, 2005 at 3:53 pm
When I tried to activate the plugin it failed to run, because it was unable to find the PEAR.php file. Please include it along with the distribution for the people without PEAR.
October 5th, 2005 at 2:47 pm
Chris, thanks so much for your great tool!
I created a simple quicktag to make inserting the code lang=”" tags easier. I hope it will be beneficial to the users of your plugin.
October 6th, 2005 at 6:42 pm
kem: I receive a very similar error. Did you ever get this working?
November 11th, 2005 at 8:46 am
On my local installation the plugin works fine with all the PEAR packages descibe at the top of this page, but I use a shared server for my online web blog and some php function have been disabled for obscur security reasons such as the ini_set function.
This function is used to add the PEAR path to the php include_path, in the “CodeHighlight.php” file :
::HLIGHT_BLOCK_1::
So the activation of the “code hilight” plugin generates error.
To correct the problem, I try to specify the real path of the PEAR folder, everywhere it’s needed :
- in CodeHighlight.php
- in Highlighter.php
And the activation of the plugin works fine.
The problem now is that the “highligth” function generate an error like “Call to undefined function: highlight()” in the “CodeHighlight.php” file at line 145 :
::HLIGHT_BLOCK_2::
How could I do to make the highlight function visible ?
December 3rd, 2005 at 12:41 pm
Regarding the problem with unnecessary vertical scroll bars in with code that shouldn’t be long enough to trigger the vertical scroll. This seems to be triggered by lines of code which are sufficiently long to trigger the horizontal scroll bar. When the horizontal scroll bar is triggered, the vertical scroll bar it triggered too.
The workaround it to avoid having long lines of code that trigger the horizontal scrollbar.
Hope this helps somebody. I’m no CSS expert but is there don’t seem to be separate vertical/horizontal settings for the overflow attribute in h1-surround.
Hope this helps somebody!
December 12th, 2005 at 10:13 am
Hello Chris. My name is Minkoo Seo, and I’ve found some important security problem. Could you email me? I can’t find your email address, so I’m writing to you using comment.
December 12th, 2005 at 10:14 am
Ah, I forgot to mention that the problem is related to CodeHighlight which I love very much.
December 18th, 2005 at 8:46 pm
Hello Chris,
I just installed your tool on my website. Unlikly it seems not to work.
I added a
[code lang="php"][/code]
to an static page. The frame and the code appears… even there’s nothing highlighted. Insted of ‘
December 18th, 2005 at 8:52 pm
ups.. Sorry…. at “I added a” I entered a code-tag with >?php echo “some php code”& ?<..
Just the code disappears on your site, too.
After “Instead” (sorry for misspelling…) I wrote: Instead of highlightning the source a blank appears between > and ? so your parser will not longer detect propper php-code, I asume. Is that correct?
What do you think, which other plugin will fire in front of yours?
reg.
Arno
December 22nd, 2005 at 12:33 am
I’m having a problem with escape characters (the backslash n) and what not, any way to fix that? love the plugin otherwise, its just makin me adapt my code to a plugin. know what i mean? get back to me.. thnx!!!
love the plugin btw..
December 22nd, 2005 at 12:35 am
and of course the second i open my mouth, it works.. :: inserts foot ::
December 22nd, 2005 at 3:13 am
Well…. That’s what I understand by supporting your own tools! Great work, Chris! I think the next place your tool will see at my PC ist the Trashcan.
regards
Arno
December 22nd, 2005 at 5:30 pm
Arno: I just tried that PHP code here and it works fine. Code in comments is buggy (as you could have figured from reading previous commenters). I will fix bugs when I have spare time, which is little, especially at this time of year. Note to anyone: this plugin is GPL’ed. Anyone can take what I have done and add features/bug fixes to it as they wish. It’s a relatively small plugin, the bulk of the functionality resides in the PEAR packages.
The plugin is released simply because some people might find it useful. You must understand that, as pointed out in the blog post, the plugin is unsupported and does not follow a release schedule. If it does not work for you or you have a problem with these “terms”, then obviously this is not something you should use.
I’m sorry I don’t have unlimited time to support and update things that I have unconditionally released for public use. I have a life, a job and things of greater importance. If you think my time and efforts, which I give away freely without asking for anything in return, belong in your trashcan: so be it. But I do ask a simple favor: do not come to my site and mock me.