Configuring WP for Code Examples and Execution
Since launching this blog a few days ago I have yet to post and code examples or tutorials. In preperation for this, and having decided that plain text code examples just wouldn’t cut it, I went searching for a plugin to format and highlight my code. Not too long afterward I came across the SyntaxHighlighter plugin. After a simple installation I was able to do things like this:
<?php //this is php code echo 'hello world'; ?>
How is the feat accomplished you say?The plugin allows you to post your code by surrounding it with the tags [/sourcecode], where lang is equal to one of these supported languages:
<ul>
<li>C++ — <code>cpp</code>, <code>c</code>, <code>c++</code></li>
<li>C# — <code>c#</code>, <code>c-sharp</code>, <code>csharp</code></li>
<li>CSS — <code>css</code></li>
<li>Delphi — <code>delphi</code>, <code>pascal</code></li>
<li>Java — <code>java</code></li>
<li>JavaScript — <code>js</code>, <code>jscript</code>, <code>javascript</code></li>
<li>PHP — <code>php</code></li>
<li>Python — <code>py</code>, <code>python</code></li>
<li>Ruby — <code>rb</code>, <code>ruby</code>, <code>rails</code>, <code>ror</code></li>
<li>SQL — <code>sql</code></li>
<li>VB — <code>vb</code>, <code>vb.net</code></li>
<li>XML/HTML — <code>xml</code>, <code>html</code>, <code>xhtml</code>, <code>xslt</code></li>
</ul>
The words following the — are valid arguments for language corresponding to that particular language, meaning that for python code you can set language equal to ‘py’ or ‘python’. Pretty cool right?
But Wait!
There was one catch in my case when it came to getting this plugin up and running. I had previously installed a plugin called <a href="http://bluesome.net/post/2005/08/18/50/" target="_blank">Exec-PHP</a> that allowed me to insert php code into posts that would be executed rather than displayed (this only works for me and it only works in posts so don’t get any ideas). So now all of my code examples would simply be executed, resulting in whatever the output of that example would be (worse potentially, the execution of that code everytime someone loads that page).
I came up with two possible solutions to this problem. The first being just to not use php tags in any of the code I post (NEVER!!!). The second being that I throw away about an hour of my life, dive into the exec-php plugin code, and set things right. Clearly I chose the second of these options.
So far I’ve only found 1 bug with this modification. I can’t display the code I used to impliment it. Any php code containing the strings [sourcecode language='p h p'] or will most likely break the plugin. Here is the link to download the plugin with the modification, feel free to comment back with error reports or improvements:
