Highlight.js

Highlight.js is a syntax highlighter written in JavaScript. It works in
the browser as well as on the server. It works with pretty much any
markup, doesn’t depend on any framework and has automatic language
detection.

Getting Started

The bare minimum for using highlight.js on a web page is linking to the
library along with one of the styles and calling
initHighlightingOnLoad:

This will find and highlight code inside of <pre><code> tags; it tries
to detect the language automatically. If automatic detection doesn’t
work for you, you can specify the language in the class attribute:

...

The list of supported language classes is available in the class
reference. Classes can also be prefixed with either language- or
lang-.

To disable highlighting altogether use the nohighlight class:

...

Custom Initialization

When you need a bit more control over the initialization of
highlight.js, you can use the highlightBlock and configure
functions. This allows you to control what to highlight and when.

Here’s an equivalent way to calling initHighlightingOnLoad using
jQuery:

$(document).ready(function() {
  $('pre code').each(function(i, block) {
    hljs.highlightBlock(block);
  });
});

You can use any tags instead of <pre><code> to mark up your code. If
you don’t use a container that preserve line breaks you will need to
configure highlight.js to use the <br> tag:

hljs.configure({useBR: true});

$('div.code').each(function(i, block) {
  hljs.highlightBlock(block);
});

For other options refer to the documentation for configure.

Web Workers

You can run highlighting inside a web worker to avoid freezing the browser
window while dealing with very big chunks of code.

In your main script:

addEventListener('load', function() {
  var code = document.querySelector('#code');
  var worker = new Worker('worker.js');
  worker.onmessage = function(event) { code.innerHTML = event.data; }
  worker.postMessage(code.textContent);
})

In worker.js:

onmessage = function(event) {
  importScripts('/highlight.pack.js');
  var result = self.hljs.highlightAuto(event.data);
  postMessage(result.value);
}

Getting the Library

You can get highlight.js as a hosted, or custom-build, browser script or
as a server module. Right out of the box the browser script supports
both AMD and CommonJS, so if you wish you can use RequireJS or
Browserify without having to build from source. The server module also
works perfectly fine with Browserify, but there is the option to use a
build specific to browsers rather than something meant for a server.
Head over to the download page for all the options.

Note: the library is not supposed to work straight from the source
on GitHub; it requires building. If none of the pre-packaged options
work for you refer to the building documentation.

Also, if you are using something like almond, you need to use the
optimizer to give the module a name. The basic example would be:

r.js -o name=hljs paths.hljs=/path/to/highlight out=highlight.js

License

Highlight.js is released under the BSD License. See LICENSE file
for details.

Links

The official site for the library is at https://highlightjs.org/.

Further in-depth documentation for the API and other topics is at
http://highlightjs.readthedocs.org/.

Authors and contributors are listed in the AUTHORS.en.txt file.