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2023-11-09 ~ 2023-11-13
I've been futzing around a bit with how code blocks render on this blog. Hugo has a built-in, _really fast_, syntax highlighter [1] courtesy of Chroma [2]. Chroma is basically automatic and it renders very quickly during the `hugo` build process, and it's a pretty solid "works everywhere out of the box" option.
That said, the one-size-fits-all approach may not actually fit everyone *well*, and Chroma does leave me wanting a bit more. Chroma sometimes struggles with tokenizing and highlighting certain languages, leaving me with boring monochromatic text blocks. Hugo's implementation supports highlighting individual lines by inserting directives next to the code fence backticks (like `{hl_lines="11-13"}` to highlight lines 11-13), but that can be clumsy if you're not sure which lines need to be highlighted, are needing to highlight multiple disjointed lines, or later insert additional lines which throw off the count. And sometimes I'd like to share a full file for context while also collapsing it down to just the bits I'm going to write about. That's not something that can be done with the built-in highlighter (at least not without tacking on a bunch of extra JavaScript and CSS nonsense).
But then I found a post from Sebastian de Deyne about Better code highlighting in Hugo with Torchlight [3]. and I thought that Torchlight [4] sounded pretty promising.
[3] Better code highlighting in Hugo with Torchlight
From Torchlight's docs [5],
*Torchlight is a VS Code-compatible syntax highlighter that requires no JavaScript, supports every language, every VS Code theme, line highlighting, git diffing, and more.*
*Unlike traditional syntax highlighting tools, Torchlight is an HTTP API that tokenizes and highlights your code on our backend server instead of in the visitor's browser.*
*We find this to be the easiest and most powerful way to achieve accurate and feature rich syntax highlighting.*
*Client-side language parsers are limited in their complexity since they have to run in the browser environment. There are a lot of edge cases that those libraries can't catch.*
*Torchlight relies on the VS Code parsing engine and TextMate language grammars to achieve the most accurate results possible. We bring the power of the entire VS Code ecosystem to your docs or blog.*
In short: Code blocks in, formatted HTML out, and no JavaScript or extra code to render this slick display in the browser:
# netlify.toml
[build]
publish = "public"
[build.environment]
HUGO_VERSION = "0.111.3"
HUGO_VERSION = "0.116.1"
[context.production]
command = """
hugo --minify
npm i @torchlight-api/torchlight-cli
npx torchlight
"""
[context.preview]
command = """
hugo --minify --environment preview
npm i @torchlight-api/torchlight-cli
npx torchlight
"""
[[headers]]
for = "/*"
[headers.values]
X-Robots-Tag = "noindex"
[[redirects]]
from = "/*"
to = "/404/"
status = 404
Pretty nice, right? That block's got:
And marking-up that code block was pretty easy and intuitive. Torchlight is controlled by annotations [6] inserted as comments appropriate for whatever language you're using (like `
# netlify.toml
[build]
publish = "public"
=> https://torchlight.dev/docs/annotations [6] annotations
[build.environment]
# diff: remove this line
HUGO_VERSION = "0.111.3"
# diff: add this line, adjust line numbering to compensate
HUGO_VERSION = "0.116.1"
# focus this line and the following 5, highlight the third line down
[context.production]
command = """
hugo --minify
npm i @torchlight-api/torchlight-cli
npx torchlight
"""
# collapse everything from `:start` to `:end`
[context.preview]
command = """
hugo --minify --environment preview
npm i @torchlight-api/torchlight-cli
npx torchlight
"""
[[headers]]
for = "/*"
[headers.values]
X-Robots-Tag = "noindex"
[[redirects]]
from = "/*"
to = "/404/"
status = 404
See what I mean? Being able to put the annotations directly on the line(s) they modify is a lot easier to manage than trying to keep track of multiple line numbers in the header. And I think the effect is pretty cool.
So what did it take to get this working on my blog?
I started with registering for a free account at torchlight.dev [7] and generating an API token. I'll need to include that later with calls to the Torchlight API. The token will be stashed as an environment variable in my Netlify configuration, but I'll also stick it in a local `.env` file for use with local builds:
echo "TORCHLIGHT_TOKEN=torch_[...]" > ./.env
I then used `npm` to install Torchlight in the root of my Hugo repo:
npm i @torchlight-api/torchlight-cli added 94 packages in 5s
That created a few new files and directories that I don't want to sync with the repo, so I added those to my `.gitignore` configuration. I'll also be sure to add that `.env` file so that I don't commit any secrets!
# .gitignore .hugo_build.lock /node_modules/ /package-lock.json /package.json /public/ /resources/ /.env
The installation instructions [8] say to then initialize Torchlight like so:
npx torchlight init
node:internal/fs/utils:350
throw err;
^
=> https://torchlight.dev/docs/clients/cli#init-command [8] installation instructions
Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/john/projects/runtimeterror/node_modules/@torchlight-api/torchlight-cli/dist/stubs/config.js'
at Object.openSync (node:fs:603:3)
at Object.readFileSync (node:fs:471:35)
at write (/home/john/projects/runtimeterror/node_modules/@torchlight-api/torchlight-cli/dist/bin/torchlight.cjs.js:524:39)
at init (/home/john/projects/runtimeterror/node_modules/@torchlight-api/torchlight-cli/dist/bin/torchlight.cjs.js:538:12)
at Command.<anonymous> (/home/john/projects/runtimeterror/node_modules/@torchlight-api/torchlight-cli/dist/bin/torchlight.cjs.js:722:12)
at Command.listener [as _actionHandler] (/home/john/projects/runtimeterror/node_modules/commander/lib/command.js:488:17)
at /home/john/projects/runtimeterror/node_modules/commander/lib/command.js:1227:65
at Command._chainOrCall (/home/john/projects/runtimeterror/node_modules/commander/lib/command.js:1144:12)
at Command._parseCommand (/home/john/projects/runtimeterror/node_modules/commander/lib/command.js:1227:27)
at Command._dispatchSubcommand (/home/john/projects/runtimeterror/node_modules/commander/lib/command.js:1050:25) {
errno: -2,
syscall: 'open',
code: 'ENOENT',
path: '/home/john/projects/runtimeterror/node_modules/@torchlight-api/torchlight-cli/dist/stubs/config.js'
}
Node.js v18.17.1
Oh. Hmm.
There's an open issue [9] which reveals that the stub config file is actually located under the `src/` directory instead of `dist/`. And it turns out the `init` step isn't strictly necessary, it's just a helper to get you a working config to start.
Now that I know where the stub config lives, I can simply copy it to my repo root. I'll then get to work modifying it to suit my needs:
cp node_modules/@torchlight-api/torchlight-cli/src/stubs/config.js ./torchlight.config.js
// torchlight.config.js
module.exports = {
// Your token from https://torchlight.dev
token: process.env.TORCHLIGHT_TOKEN, // this will come from a netlify build var
// The Torchlight client caches highlighted code blocks. Here you
// can define which directory you'd like to use. You'll likely
// want to add this directory to your .gitignore. Set to
// `false` to use an in-memory cache. You may also
// provide a full cache implementation.
cache: 'cache',
cache: false, // disable cache for netlify builds
// Which theme you want to use. You can find all of the themes at
// https://torchlight.dev/docs/themes.
theme: 'material-theme-palenight',
theme: 'one-dark-pro', // switch up the theme
// The Host of the API.
host: 'https://api.torchlight.dev',
// Global options to control block-level settings.
// https://torchlight.dev/docs/options
options: {
// Turn line numbers on or off globally.
lineNumbers: false,
// Control the `style` attribute applied to line numbers.
// lineNumbersStyle: '',
// Turn on +/- diff indicators.
diffIndicators: true,
// If there are any diff indicators for a line, put them
// in place of the line number to save horizontal space.
diffIndicatorsInPlaceOfLineNumbers: true
diffIndicatorsInPlaceOfLineNumbers: true,
// When lines are collapsed, this is the text that will
// be shown to indicate that they can be expanded.
// summaryCollapsedIndicator: '...',
summaryCollapsedIndicator: 'Click to expand...', // make the collapse a little more explicit
},
// Options for the highlight command.
highlight: {
// Directory where your un-highlighted source files live. If
// left blank, Torchlight will use the current directory.
input: '',
input: 'public', // tells Torchlight where to find Hugo's processed HTML output
// Directory where your highlighted files should be placed. If
// left blank, files will be modified in place.
output: '',
// Globs to include when looking for files to highlight.
includeGlobs: [
'**/*.htm',
'**/*.html'
],
// String patterns to ignore (not globs). The entire file
// path will be searched and if any of these strings
// appear, the file will be ignored.
excludePatterns: [
'/node_modules/',
'/vendor/'
]
}
}
You can find more details about the configuration options here [10].
It's not strictly necessary for the basic functionality, but applying a little bit of extra CSS to match up with the classes leveraged by Torchlight can help to make things look a bit more polished. Fortunately for this _fake-it-til-you-make-it_ dev, Torchlight provides sample CSS that work great for this:
Put those blocks together (along with a few minor tweaks), and here's what I started with in `assets/css/torchlight.css`:
// torchlight! {"lineNumbers": true}
/*********************************************
I'll make sure that this CSS gets dynamically attached to any pages with a code block by adding this to the bottom of my `layouts/partials/head.html`:
<!-- syntax highlighting -->
{{ if (findRE "<pre" .Content 1) }}
{{ $syntax := resources.Get "css/torchlight.css" | minify }}
<link href="{{ $syntax.RelPermalink }}" rel="stylesheet">
{{ end }}
As a bit of housekeeping, I'm also going to remove the built-in highlighter configuration from my `config/_default/markup.toml` file to make sure it doesn't conflict with Torchlight:
# config/_default/markup.toml
[goldmark]
[goldmark.renderer]
hardWraps = false
unsafe = true
xhtml = false
[goldmark.extensions]
typographer = false
[highlight]
anchorLineNos = true
codeFences = true
guessSyntax = true
hl_Lines = ''
lineNos = false
lineNoStart = 1
lineNumbersInTable = false
noClasses = false
tabwidth = 2
style = 'monokai'
# Table of contents
# Add toc = true to content front matter to enable
[tableOfContents]
endLevel = 5
ordered = false
startLevel = 3
Now that the pieces are in place, it's time to start building!
I like to preview my blog as I work on it so that I know what it will look like before I hit `git push` and let Netlify do its magic. And Hugo has been fantastic for that! But since I'm offloading the syntax highlighting to the Torchlight API, I'll need to manually build the site instead of relying on Hugo's instant preview builds.
There are a couple of steps I'll use for this:
I'm lazy, though, so I'll even put that into a quick `build.sh` script to help me run local builds:
#!/usr/bin/env bash # Quick script to run local builds source .env hugo --minify --environment local -D npx torchlight python3 -m http.server --directory public 1313
Now I can just make the script executable and fire it off:
chmod +x build.sh
./build.sh
Start building sites …
hugo v0.111.3+extended linux/amd64 BuildDate=unknown VendorInfo=nixpkgs
| EN
-------------------+------
Pages | 202
Paginator pages | 0
Non-page files | 553
Static files | 49
Processed images | 0
Aliases | 5
Sitemaps | 1
Cleaned | 0
Total in 248 ms
Highlighting index.html
Highlighting 3d-modeling-and-printing-on-chrome-os/index.html
Highlighting 404/index.html
Highlighting about/index.html
+ + + O
o '
________________ _
\__(=======/_=_/____.--'-`--.___
\ \ `,--,-.___.----'
.--`\\--'../ |
'---._____.|] -0- |o
* | -0- -O-
' o 0 | '
. -0- . '
Did you really want to see the full file list?
Highlighting tags/vsphere/index.html
Highlighting tags/windows/index.html
Highlighting tags/wireguard/index.html
Highlighting tags/wsl/index.html
Writing to /home/john/projects/runtimeterror/public/abusing-chromes-custom-search-engines-for-fun-and-profit/index.html
Writing to /home/john/projects/runtimeterror/public/auto-connect-to-protonvpn-on-untrusted-wifi-with-tasker/index.html
Writing to /home/john/projects/runtimeterror/public/cat-file-without-comments/index.html
' * + -O- |
o o .
___________ 0 o .
+/-/_"/-/_/-/| -0- o -O- * *
/"-/-_"/-_//|| . -O-
/__________/|/| + | *
|"|_'='-]:+|/|| . o -0- . *
|-+-|.|_'-"||// + | | ' ' 0
|[".[:!+-'=|// | -0- 0 -O-
|='!+|-:]|-|/ -0- o |-0- 0 -O-
---------- * | -O| + o
o -O- -0- -0- -O-
| + | -O- |
-0- -0- . O
-O- | -O- *
your code will be assimilated
Writing to /home/john/projects/runtimeterror/public/k8s-on-vsphere-node-template-with-packer/index.html
Writing to /home/john/projects/runtimeterror/public/tanzu-community-edition-k8s-homelab/index.html
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 1313 (http://0.0.0.0:1313/) ...
127.0.0.1 - - [07/Nov/2023 20:34:29] "GET /spotlight-on-torchlight/ HTTP/1.1" 200 -
Setting up Netlify to leverage the Torchlight API is kind of similar. I'll start with logging in to the Netlify dashboard [14] and navigating to **Site Configuration > Environment Variables**. There, I'll click on **Add a variable > Add a ingle variable**. I'll give the new variable a key of `TORCHLIGHT_TOKEN` and set its value to the token I obtained earlier.
Image: Screenshot showing the creation of the 'TORCHLIGHT_TOKEN' variable in Netlify
Once that's done, I edit the `netlify.toml` file at the root of my site repo to alter the build commands:
[build] publish = "public" [build.environment] HUGO_VERSION = "0.111.3" [context.production] command = "hugo" command = """ hugo --minify npm i @torchlight-api/torchlight-cli npx torchlight """
Now when I `git push` new content, Netlify will use Hugo to build the site, then install and call Torchlight to `++fancy;` the code blocks before the site gets served. Very nice!
Of course, I. Just. Can't. leave well enough alone, so my work here isn't finished - not by a long shot.
You see, I'm a sucker for handy "copy" buttons attached to code blocks, and that's not something that Torchlight does (it just returns rendered HTML, remember? No fancy JavaScript here). I also wanted to add informative prompt indicators (like `
I had previously implemented a solution based *heavily* on Justin James' blog post, Hugo - Dynamically Add Copy Code Snippet Button [15]. Getting that Chroma-focused solution to work well with Torchlight-formatted code blocks took some work, particularly since I'm inept at web development and can barely spell "CSS" and "JavaScrapped".
[15] Hugo - Dynamically Add Copy Code Snippet Button
But I eventually fumbled through the changes required to meet my #goals, and I'm pretty happy with how it all works.
Remember Torchlight's in-line annotations that I mentioned earlier? They're pretty capable out of the box, but can also be expanded through the use of custom classes [16]. This makes it easy to selectively apply special handling to selected lines of code, something that's otherwise pretty dang tricky to do with Chroma.
So, for instance, I could add a class `.cmd` for standard user-level command-line inputs:
sudo make me a sandwich
sudo make me a sandwich
Or `.cmd_root` for a root prompt:
wall "Make your own damn sandwich."
wall "Make your own damn sandwich."
And for deviants:
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green "A taco is a sandwich"
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green "A taco is a sandwich"
I also came up with a cleverly-named `.nocopy` class for the returned lines that shouldn't be copyable:
copy this but not this
copy this but not this
So that's how I'll tie my custom classes to individual lines of code, but I still need to actually define those classes.
I'll drop those at the bottom of the `assets/css/torchlight.css` file I created earlier:
/* /*********************************************
The `.cmd` classes will simply insert the respective prompt _before_ each flagged line, and the `.nocopy` class will prevent those lines from being selected (and copied). Now for the tricky part...
There are two major pieces for the code-copy wizardry: the CSS to style/arrange the copy button and language label, and the JavaScript to make it work.
I put the CSS in `assets/css/code-copy-button.css`:
/* adapted from https://digitaldrummerj.me/hugo-add-copy-code-snippet-button/ */
.highlight {
position: relative;
z-index: 0;
padding: 0;
margin:40px 0 10px 0;
border-radius: 4px;
}
.copy-code-button {
position: absolute;
z-index: -1;
right: 0px;
top: -26px;
font-size: 13px;
font-weight: 700;
line-height: 14px;
letter-spacing: 0.5px;
width: 65px;
color: var(--fg);
background-color: var(--bg);
border: 1.25px solid var(--off-bg);
border-top-left-radius: 4px;
border-top-right-radius: 4px;
border-bottom-right-radius: 0px;
border-bottom-left-radius: 0px;
white-space: nowrap;
padding: 6px 6px 7px 6px;
margin: 0 0 0 1px;
cursor: pointer;
opacity: 0.6;
}
.copy-code-button:hover,
.copy-code-button:focus,
.copy-code-button:active,
.copy-code-button:active:hover {
color: var(--off-bg);
background-color: var(--off-fg);
opacity: 0.8;
}
.copyable-text-area {
position: absolute;
height: 0;
z-index: -1;
opacity: .01;
}
.torchlight [data-lang]:before {
position: absolute;
z-index: -1;
top: -26px;
left: 0px;
content: attr(data-lang);
font-size: 13px;
font-weight: 700;
color: var(--fg);
background-color: var(--bg);
border-top-left-radius: 4px;
border-top-right-radius: 4px;
border-bottom-left-radius: 0;
border-bottom-right-radius: 0;
padding: 6px 6px 7px 6px;
line-height: 14px;
opacity: 0.6;
position: absolute;
letter-spacing: 0.5px;
border: 1.25px solid var(--off-bg);
margin: 0 0 0 1px;
}
And, as before, I'll link this from the bottom of my `layouts/partial/head.html` so it will get loaded on the appropriate pages:
<!-- syntax highlighting -->
{{ if (findRE "<pre" .Content 1) }}
{{ $syntax := resources.Get "css/torchlight.css" | minify }}
<link href="{{ $syntax.RelPermalink }}" rel="stylesheet">
{{ $copyCss := resources.Get "css/code-copy-button.css" | minify }}
<link href="{{ $copyCss.RelPermalink }}" rel="stylesheet">
{{ end }}
That sure makes the code blocks and accompanying button / labels look pretty great, but I still need to actually make the button work. For that, I'll need some JavaScript that (again) largely comes from Justin's post.
With all the different classes and things used with Torchlight, it took a lot of (generally misguided) tinkering for me to get the script to copy just the text I wanted (and nothing else). I learned a ton in the process, so I've highlighted the major deviations from Justin's script.
Anyway, here's my `assets/js/code-copy-button.js`:
// adapted from https://digitaldrummerj.me/hugo-add-copy-code-snippet-button/
function createCopyButton(highlightDiv) {
const button = document.createElement("button");
button.className = "copy-code-button";
button.type = "button";
button.innerText = "Copy";
button.addEventListener("click", () => copyCodeToClipboard(button, highlightDiv));
highlightDiv.insertBefore(button, highlightDiv.firstChild);
const wrapper = document.createElement("div");
wrapper.className = "highlight-wrapper";
highlightDiv.parentNode.insertBefore(wrapper, highlightDiv);
wrapper.appendChild(highlightDiv);
}
document.querySelectorAll(".highlight").forEach((highlightDiv) => createCopyButton(highlightDiv));
async function copyCodeToClipboard(button, highlightDiv) {
// capture all code lines in the selected block which aren't classed `nocopy` or `line-remove`
let codeToCopy = highlightDiv.querySelectorAll(":last-child > .torchlight > code > .line:not(.nocopy, .line-remove)");
// now remove the first-child of each line if it is of class `line-number`
codeToCopy = Array.from(codeToCopy).reduce((accumulator, line) => {
if (line.firstChild.className != "line-number") {
return accumulator + line.innerText + "\n"; }
else {
return accumulator + Array.from(line.children).filter(
(child) => child.className != "line-number").reduce(
(accumulator, child) => accumulator + child.innerText, "") + "\n";
}
}, "");
try {
var result = await navigator.permissions.query({ name: "clipboard-write" });
if (result.state == "granted" || result.state == "prompt") {
await navigator.clipboard.writeText(codeToCopy);
} else {
button.blur();
button.innerText = "Error!";
setTimeout(function () {
button.innerText = "Copy";
}, 2000);
}
} catch (_) {
button.blur();
button.innerText = "Error!";
setTimeout(function () {
button.innerText = "Copy";
}, 2000);
} finally {
button.blur();
button.innerText = "Copied!";
setTimeout(function () {
button.innerText = "Copy";
}, 2000);
}
}
And this script gets called from the bottom of my `layouts/partials/footer.html`:
{{ if (findRE "<pre" .Content 1) }}
{{ $jsCopy := resources.Get "js/code-copy-button.js" | minify }}
<script src="{{ $jsCopy.RelPermalink }}"></script>
{{ end }}
And at this point, I can just run my `build.sh` script again to rebuild the site locally and verify that it works as well as I think it does.
It looks pretty good to me, so I'll go ahead and push this up to Netlify. If all goes well, this post and the new code block styling will go live at the same time.
See you on the other side!
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Generate a Dynamic robots.txt File in Hugo with External Data Sources
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