Syntect for Node.js and WASM

Syntect (Syntax highlighter in Rust) for Node.js and WebAssembly.

Syntect highlights code with TextMate's .tmTheme theme. And the highlighting result is independent of the theme (using CSS classes, unlike Shiki, which uses inline styles) so you can switch themes in your website by only switching CSS.

# Install the meta-package
yarn add syntect       # Auto choose --
                       # Native binding for Node.js
                       # WebAssembly for browser

# Or Install manually
yarn add @syntect/node # Node.js native binding
yarn add @syntect/wasm # WebAssembly

Usage

Note: See WASM Notes if you encountered any error using the WASM version.

import { getCSS, highlight } from "syntect" /* or "@syntect/node" / "@syntect/wasm" */;

// Generate CSS code from .tmTheme file
const result = getCSS(
  // The text content of .tmTheme file
  tmThemeText,
  // The prefix of CSS class name,
  "hl-"
);
console.log(result.css);
// Only needed once.
// You could save the CSS file for your website.
// See also [CLI]

// Highlight code
const highlightResult = highlight(
  // The code to highlight
  "#include <cstdio>",
  // The language name or file extension. Use "plain" or "plaintext" for plain text
  "cpp",
  // The prefix of CSS class name,
  "hl-"
);
console.log(result.html);

CLI

There's a cli utility for getCSS function. You should install the Node.js version (syntect or @syntect/node) to use it.

# Install with `yarn add syntect` or `yarn add @syntect/node`

# yarn syntect-css <prefix>
cat my-theme.tmTheme | yarn syntect-css hl-

# e.g. the tomorrow theme
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chriskempson/textmate-tomorrow-theme/master/Tomorrow.tmTheme | yarn syntect-css hl-

WASM Notes

The WASM version has all code in ES Modules.

To use the WASM version with Node.js, please add --experimental-wasm-modules to your Node.js command line options to enable Node.js to load .wasm modules. For older version of Node.js you'll also need --experimental-modules to enable basic ES Modules support.

To use the WASM version in browser, you may need to configure your bundler:

• Webpack 5: enable experiments.asyncWebAssembly.
• Vite: not currently supported but related works are in progress.