HUGO
News Docs Themes Community GitHub

transform.Highlight

Renders code with a syntax highlighter.

Syntax

transform.Highlight CODE LANG [OPTIONS]

Returns

template.HTML

Alias

highlight

The highlight function uses the Chroma syntax highlighter, supporting over 200 languages with more than 40 available styles.

Arguments

The transform.Highlight shortcode takes three arguments.

CODE
(string) The code to highlight.
LANG
(string) The language of the code to highlight. Choose from one of the supported languages. This value is case-insensitive.
OPTIONS
(map or string) A map or space-separate key-value pairs wrapped in quotation marks. Set default values for each option in your site configuration. The key names are case-insensitive.

Examples

{{ $input := `fmt.Println("Hello World!")` }}
{{ transform.Highlight $input "go" }}

{{ $input := `console.log('Hello World!');` }}
{{ $lang := "js" }}
{{ transform.Highlight $input $lang "lineNos=table, style=api" }}

{{ $input := `echo "Hello World!"` }}
{{ $lang := "bash" }}
{{ $opts := dict "lineNos" "table" "style" "dracula" }}
{{ transform.Highlight $input $lang $opts }}

Options

anchorLineNos
(bool) Whether to render each line number as an HTML anchor element, setting the id attribute of the surrounding span element to the line number. Irrelevant if lineNos is false. Default is false.
codeFences
(bool) Whether to highlight fenced code blocks. Default is true.
guessSyntax
(bool) Whether to automatically detect the language if the LANG argument is blank or set to a language for which there is no corresponding lexer. Falls back to a plain text lexer if unable to automatically detect the language. Default is false.

The Chroma syntax highlighter includes lexers for approximately 250 languages, but only 5 of these have implemented automatic language detection.

hl_Lines
(string) A space-delimited list of lines to emphasize within the highlighted code. To emphasize lines 2, 3, 4, and 7, set this value to 2-4 7. This option is independent of the lineNoStart option.
hl_inline
(bool) Whether to render the highlighted code without a wrapping container. Default is false.
lineAnchors
(string) When rendering a line number as an HTML anchor element, prepend this value to the id attribute of the surrounding span element. This provides unique id attributes when a page contains two or more code blocks. Irrelevant if lineNos or anchorLineNos is false.
lineNoStart
(int) The number to display at the beginning of the first line. Irrelevant if lineNos is false. Default is 1.
lineNos
(bool) Whether to display a number at the beginning of each line. Default is false.
lineNumbersInTable
(bool) Whether to render the highlighted code in an HTML table with two cells. The left table cell contains the line numbers, while the right table cell contains the code. Irrelevant if lineNos is false. Default is true.
noClasses
(bool) Whether to use inline CSS styles instead of an external CSS file. To use an external CSS file, set this value to false and generate the CSS file using the hugo gen chromastyles command. Default is true.
style
(string) The CSS styles to apply to the highlighted code. See the style gallery for examples. Case-sensitive. Default is monokai.
tabWidth
(int) Substitute this number of spaces for each tab character in your highlighted code. Irrelevant if noClasses is false. Default is 4.
wrapperClass
New in v0.140.2
(string) The class or classes to use for the outermost element of the highlighted code. Default is highlight.

Instead of specifying both lineNos and lineNumbersInTable, you can use the following shorthand notation:

lineNos=inline
equivalent to lineNos=true and lineNumbersInTable=false
lineNos=table
equivalent to lineNos=true and lineNumbersInTable=true