Syntax highlighting Svelte with Prism

svelteprismsyntax highlighting

I've been using Svelte to show code snippets, such as this and this, in which the code are dynamically generated and highlighted in the browser. In these examples, I used Prism to do syntax highlighting.

tl;dr

  • Prism provides an API, Prism.highlight(code, language), which returns a highlighted HTML.
  • Use {@html} or Svelte actions, use: to insert the highlighted HTML into Svelte component
  • Need special handling of \n newline character, space and tab character.

Snippet

<script>
import Prism from 'prismjs';
export let code;
export let language;
</script>
<div class="code">
{@html Prism.highlight(code, Prism.languages[language])}
</div>
<svelte:head>
<link href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/prism/1.22.0/themes/prism-dark.min.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</svelte:head>
<style>
.code {
white-space: pre-wrap;
}
</style>

Highlighting with Prism

Prism provides an API Prism.highlight(code, language), which returns a highlighted HTML:

<script>
import Prism from 'prismjs';
let code = 'console.log("Hello world");';
let html = Prism.highlight(code, Prism.languages.javascript);
</script>

To insert the HTML into the Svelte component, you can use {@html}

<script>
import Prism from 'prismjs';
let code = 'console.log("Hello world");';
</script>
{@html Prism.highlight(code, Prism.languages.javascript)}

or Svelte actions

<script>
import Prism from 'prismjs';
let code = 'console.log("Hello world");';
function prism(node, code) {
node.innerHTML = Prism.highlight(code, Prism.languages.javascript);
return {
update(code) {
node.innerHTML = Prism.highlight(code, Prism.languages.javascript);
}
}
}
</script>
<div use:prism={code} />

no css

At this point, you may not see any syntax highlighting yet, that's because you need to add prism.css or any other prism theme CSS.

<svelte:head>
<link href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/prism/1.22.0/themes/prism-dark.min.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</svelte:head>
<script>
import Prism from 'prismjs';
let code = 'console.log("Hello world");';
</script>
{@html Prism.highlight(code, Prism.languages.javascript)}

You can find more Prism themes over prism themes.

If you have a multiline code, you may notice that they all appear in 1 single line.

multiline

That's because Prism syntax highlighting still maintains the newline character \n.

You can either wrap the html within a <pre> tag:

<pre>
{@html html}
</pre>

or, replace all the \n to <br />:

{@html html.replace(/\n/g, '<br />')}

or, with CSS:

<div>
{@html html}
</div>
<style>
div {
white-space: pre-wrap;
}
</style>

However, if you are not using the CSS white-space property or a <pre> tag, you may need to preserve white-space such as tab or space in the beginning of each line too, for proper indentation of your code:

{@html html
.split('\n')
.map(str => str.replace(/^(s+)/, (_, space) => '<span class="tab"></span>'.repeat(space.length)))
.join('<br />')}
<style>
:global(span.tab) {
display: inline-block;
width: 2ch;
}
</style>

To support syntax highlighting for different languages, you can install them. In most cases, they will be enhancing the Prism "automatically"

With prism-svelte

<script>
import Prism from 'prismjs';
import 'prism-svelte';
let code = `
{#each list as item}
<div>{item}</div>
{/each}`.trim();
<script>
{@html Prism.highlight(code, Prism.languages.svelte)}

With diff-highlight

<script>
import Prism from 'prismjs';
import 'prismjs/components/prism-diff';
import 'prismjs/plugins/diff-highlight/prism-diff-highlight';
let code = `
+ console.log('a');
- console.log('b');
console.log('c');
`
</script>
<div>
{@html Prism.highlight(code, Prism.languages['diff'], 'diff-javascript')}
</div>