prism.js
Add beautiful, lightweight syntax highlighting to any website. Supports hundreds of languages and is highly extensible with plugins for a custom experience.
What is Prism
Prism is a syntax highlighter for the web. It is a lightweight and extensible JavaScript library created to display code on websites in a readable and visually appealing way. The core purpose of Prism is to take plain text code snippets and apply colors and styles to different parts of the code, such as keywords, comments, strings, and functions, based on the rules of a specific programming language. It is built with modern web standards, using semantic HTML5 markup. Prism is an open-source project, initially created by Lea Verou, and is now maintained by a dedicated community of contributors. It is widely used on many websites, from personal blogs to large corporate documentation pages, because of its small file size and ease of use.
Prism Features
Prism offers a range of features designed for performance and flexibility.
- Lightweight Core: The main Prism script is very small, around 2KB when compressed. This ensures that adding it to a website does not significantly slow down page loading times.
- Extensive Language Support: It supports over 290 programming languages and markup languages, with new ones added regularly by the community.
- Extensible with Plugins: Prism has a rich plugin architecture. Users can add functionalities like line numbers, a copy-to-clipboard button, line highlighting, and language name display without bloating the core library.
- Easy Theming: Styling is done entirely with CSS. Prism comes with several pre-built themes, from dark to light, and creating a custom theme is straightforward by modifying the CSS file.
- Semantic HTML: It encourages the use of correct HTML tags, such as
<pre>and<code>, for marking up code. This is good for accessibility and search engine optimization. - Web Worker Support: For very large code blocks, Prism can perform highlighting in a separate thread using Web Workers. This prevents the user interface from freezing while the code is being processed.
- Intuitive Language Classes: You can define the programming language for a code block by adding a class like
language-javascriptto the HTML element. This class can also be added to a parent element to apply to multiple code blocks at once. - Highlights Embedded Languages: Prism can correctly highlight languages embedded within another, for example, JavaScript code inside an HTML script tag or CSS inside a style tag.
Prism Pricing Plans
Prism is a completely free and open-source software project. It is distributed under the MIT License, which means it can be used for any purpose, including commercial projects, without any cost. There are no pricing plans, subscriptions, or hidden fees associated with using Prism.
Prism Free Plan
As an open-source tool, the entire Prism library is free. There is no separate free plan or trial version. Users have full access to the core library, all supported languages, all official plugins, and all themes. You can download a custom build from the official website, selecting only the components you need for your project, and use it indefinitely for free.
How to use Prism
Getting started with Prism is a simple process.
- Download a custom build: Go to the Prism.js website's download page. Select the compression level, the themes you like, the programming languages you need to highlight, and any plugins you want to add.
- Include the files: Click the download button to get your custom
prism.jsandprism.cssfiles. Link these files in your HTML page. The CSS file should be placed in the<head>section, and the JavaScript file should be placed just before the closing</body>tag.<link href="prism.css" rel="stylesheet" /> <script src="prism.js"></script> - Add your code: To display a block of code, wrap it in a
<pre>element and a<code>element. Add a CSS class to the<code>tag to specify the language, likeclass="language-css".<pre><code class="language-css">p { color: red }</code></pre> - For inline code: For short, single-line code snippets, use only the
<code>tag with the appropriate language class.<p>Use the <code class="language-css">color</code> property to change text color.</p> - Escape HTML characters: Remember to replace
<with<and&with&inside your code to prevent the browser from interpreting them as HTML tags.
After these steps, Prism will automatically find and highlight all the code on your page when it loads.
Pros and Cons of Prism
Pros
- Very lightweight: Its small file size has minimal impact on website performance.
- Easy to set up: Basic implementation requires just including two files and adding a class to your code blocks.
- Highly customizable: You can choose exactly which languages and plugins to include, keeping the final file size small.
- Semantic: It uses standard HTML elements, which is good for web standards and accessibility.
- Extensible: A wide variety of plugins add useful features like line numbers and copy buttons.
- Free and Open Source: No cost to use, and a strong community for support and development.
Cons
- No automatic language detection: You must manually specify the language for each code block, unlike some alternatives.
- Regex-based: Like many highlighters, its reliance on regular expressions can cause it to fail on some very complex or unusual code edge cases.
- Limited support for older browsers: It does not support Internet Explorer 10 and older versions.
Prism integrations
Prism is a JavaScript library, not a standalone application, so it integrates directly into web projects rather than connecting to other SaaS tools. It can be used with virtually any web technology.
- Content Management Systems (CMS): Prism can be easily added to themes for WordPress, Ghost, Joomla, and other CMS platforms. Many systems also have plugins available that handle the integration of Prism.
- Static Site Generators: It is a popular choice for static site generators like Jekyll, Hugo, Eleventy, and Next.js. Developers can include it in their base templates to highlight code in blog posts and documentation.
- JavaScript Frameworks: For developers using frameworks like React, Vue, or Angular, Prism can be installed via npm (
npm install prismjs) and imported directly into components for dynamic highlighting. - Node.js: Prism can be used on a server with Node.js to perform syntax highlighting before the HTML is sent to the browser.
Prism Alternatives
- Highlight.js: A very popular alternative that is known for its ability to automatically detect the language of a code block. It supports a vast number of languages and themes.
- Shiki: A modern syntax highlighter that uses the same TextMate grammars as VS Code. This often results in more accurate highlighting that perfectly matches what developers see in their editor.
- CodeMirror: More than just a highlighter, CodeMirror is a full in-browser code editor. However, it can be configured in a read-only mode to serve as a powerful and accurate syntax highlighter.
- Pygments: A server-side syntax highlighter written in Python. It is a great choice for projects with a Python backend, as it can pre-render the highlighted code into static HTML.
Prism API
Yes, Prism provides a simple JavaScript API for developers to control highlighting programmatically. This is useful for dynamic web applications where content is loaded after the initial page load. There is no API key required, as it is a library that runs in your own environment.
The main API method is Prism.highlight(). When used in a Node.js environment, you can highlight a string of code like this:
const Prism = require('prismjs');
const loadLanguages = require('prismjs/components/');
// Load the language you need
loadLanguages(['css']);
// The code you want to highlight
const code = 'p { color: red }';
// The grammar definition for the language
const grammar = Prism.languages.css;
// Highlight the code
const html = Prism.highlight(code, grammar, 'css');
console.log(html);
In the browser, you can use Prism.highlightElement() to highlight a specific DOM element. For more detailed information, developers can consult the official Prism documentation on its website.
Prism Affiliate program
Prism is a free, open-source project driven by community contributions. It does not have a commercial business model, and therefore, it does not offer an affiliate or partner program. The project is supported by volunteers who contribute code, create plugins, write documentation, and report bugs. If you wish to support Prism, the best way is to contribute to the project on its GitHub repository or help other users in community forums.
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