UPDATE: Chili 2.1 has been released
Changes
- added support for a much better recipe format
- optimized regular expressions for speed
- moved project hosting to Google Code: jquery-chili-js
- removed support for the previous recipe format
- removed support for metaobjects
- removed support for nearly obsolete features
Links
A new recipe format
Chili 2.0 supports a new recipe format which is a bit more structured than the old one and will make hard-to-highlight languages a thing of the past. BTW, old recipes won’t be accepted by Chili 2.0. (although a simple manual conversion is possible)
How to convert old recipes to the new format
First of all let’s see an example of how to convert a recipe in the old format to the new one.
What follows is a piece of recipe (for JavaScript) in the old format
{[ .js-old | .hilite( =javascript= ) ]}
And here is the same piece in the new format
{[ .js-new | .hilite( =javascript= ) ]}
As you see, they are very similar. Here are all the differences:
- property names beginning with an underscore are reserved words
- _name didn’t exist before
- _case replaces the old ignoreCase; _case is TRUE if the language is case sensitive, and FALSE otherwise; _case defaults to FALSE
- _main replaces the old steps
- _match replaces the old exp
- _style didn’t exist before
_style makes a big difference with respect to the past: CSS styles can now be embedded into the recipe. Separate stylesheets are no longer supported by the autoloading engine, but you can load them by yourself, if you prefer to keep them apart.
Another important difference about CSS is that now Chili builds the class associated to a step, by prefixing the _name to the step name, separated by __ (a double underscore). So, for example, the class for the multiline comment will be js__ml_comment.
More expressive power with the new recipe format
Besides the minor changes described in the previous section, the new format is much more powerful thanks to the major improvement I’m going to describe here.
The old recipe format supported an optional replacement property of a step, by means of which you could customize how the highlighting was applied to the matched text. Such a feature was useful when you captured subexpressions and wanted to highlight them separately.
Now _replace replaces replacement (sic) and it’s still optional.
As before, if you don’t specify a _replace property, Chili will default to <span class=”$0″>$$</span>, where $0 and $$ refer to the name of the current step and the matched text respectively.
As before, _replace can also be a different string expression, like in the following step, extracted from the MySQL recipe
{[ .replace-string | .hilite( =javascript= ) ]}
What to note in the above example:
- you can specify a style for each of the involved classes, by using properties of an object
- you must use a span for applying style to a text run
A big improvement
In Chili 2.0, _replace can also be a function, like in the following step, extracted from the new HTML recipe
{[ .replace-function | .hilite( =javascript= ) ]}
What to note in the above example:
- when _replace is a function, it receives match and submatches as arguments, and inside
- there is a valid this object which contains a magic x method, by which
- a string can be escaped for HTML (like open and close), or
- a string can be transformed by an expression (like content)
Chili 2.0 recipes are modular
A Chili 2.0 recipe contains blocks (like _main), which contain steps (like tag_start). An expression can be built for referencing each module, be it a recipe, a block, or a step. For example, /tag_attrs is the tag_attrs block in the current recipe.
One method to highlight them all
The JavaScript code inside a _replace function can use the x method of this.
x takes two arguments: a subject to process, and an optional module to use.
x returns the subject escaped for HTML if no module is given, or the module is not available, else it returns the result of applying the module to the subject using Chili 2.0.
If the ChiliBook option recipeLoading is true, any unavailable module will be automatically loaded.
The new HTML recipe
As an example, here is the new HTML recipe
{[ .html-new | .hilite( =javascript= ) ]}
What to note in the above example:
- a _replace function can be used for applying a recipe to a text run inside another recipe, like the script an style steps, where highlighting of script and style elements is delegated to js and css recipes respectively
- a _replace function can be used for isolating the parsing of a text run, like the tag_attrs step, where highlighting of name/value pairs happens only in the context of tag attributes
Module paths
A module path is an expression that identifies a Chili 2.0 module. A path has three components (though some can be hidden) separated by a / (forward slash), each with a specific meaning: recipe / block / step. (white space added for clarity)
Here is a list of all the combinations in a module path:
- recipe
a module path like css refers to the entire css recipe - recipe / block
a module path like css/definition refers to the definition block of the css recipe - recipe / block / step
a module path like css/definition/property refers to the property step of the definition block of the css recipe - / block
a module path like /definition refers to the definition block of the current recipe - / block / step
a module path like /definition/property refers to the property step of the definition block of the current recipe - / / step
a module path like //property refers to the property step of the current block of the current recipe
As you see, leading slashes have a meaning.
Remember
- a recipe module invocation tries to match all the steps of the _main block
- a block module invocation tries to match all its steps
- a step module invocation tries to match just itself
Help request
I think that Chili 2.0 is pretty good at highlighting, but it needs more fine recipes to succeed. For this release I’ve rewritten some from scratch, and converted some others. I’m not a good programmer in languages other than the ones for which I rewrote a recipe. But if you are and have time and will, then you could write a Chili 2.0 recipe for your favorite language, together with a couple of working samples, and send all to me. I’d be very happy to add your contributed recipes to the project as soon as they are available.
Rewritten
- CSS
- HTML
- JavaScript
- PHP
Converted
- C++
- C#
- Delphi
- Java
- LotusScript
- MySQL
Setup and Examples
Here is the start page for Chili 2.0 where you’ll find setup instructions and some examples.
The example pages do not show the code which is going to be highlighted.
Nice work you did. The new recipes format is very powerful.
To show the code you have to click on the language name in the box at the bottom of each example.
Is it possibile trigger chili highlight after ahah injection?
Thanks Max
Grazie!
YCodaCode plugin 2.0 (http://www.maxb.net/scripts/ycodaslider-2.0/)
Ovviamente sei nei crediti (spagnolo o italiano?):
http://www.maxb.net/scripts/ycodaslider-2.0/include/demo/#12
I’ve been looking to replace server-side syntax highlighting with something on the client side, when I came across Chili.
I was a little surprised there wasn’t support for Ruby out of box. Does anyone know if that’s being worked on, if someone made their own recipe?
I studied Ruby some time ago, but I’m not able to write a recipe…
Anyway, I found a post by Dan Engle about a plugin he developed for TinyMCE and Ruby on Rails. There is a recipe (version 1.9) for Ruby into the downloadable file.
Hi, first of all, great job beautifully done.
Is it possible to use chili in real time? I’m working on an idea for a browser based IDE using an iframe or div. I could use a regex to recognise that it was in say, a script or style block, and add <code class=”javascript”> or whatever language I’m writing in, but is there a way of getting chili to just highlight markup as it is completed, rather than starting from the beginning each time, like the way desktop based IDEs do it. I’m using jQuery to build it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Paul.
I am using your neat plugin along with jquery. When i try to parse a pre-code php block the contents get replaced by highlighted text for like 0.5 sec and then my whole pre-code is empty. I’ve tried it with other languages like MySQL, C-sharp and CSS but those get parsed correctly.
I’ve used htmlspecialchars to convert my php code to encoded data.
Do you have any idea how this might be possible?
Thanks in advance