Shiki PHP
A PHP package that provides syntax highlighting using Shiki's language engine with support for 100+ languages.
What is Shiki PHP?
Shiki-php is a PHP wrapper for the Shiki syntax highlighter, enabling developers to generate beautifully highlighted code snippets directly from PHP applications. It leverages the same TextMate grammar engine used by popular code editors like VS Code, ensuring accurate and visually appealing highlighting for over 100 programming languages.
PHP developers building applications that require high-quality code presentation, such as documentation sites, blogs, or educational platforms. It is particularly useful for Laravel users and those using league/commonmark for Markdown processing.
Developers choose Shiki-php for its editor-grade accuracy and visual fidelity, matching the highlighting quality of VS Code. It offers unique features like line marking (highlighted, added, deleted, focus) and supports custom VSCode theme JSON files, providing more control than basic syntax highlighters.
Overview
Code highlighting with Shiki in PHP
Use Cases
Best For
- Generating syntax-highlighted code snippets in PHP-based documentation or blog platforms.
- Integrating high-quality code highlighting into Laravel applications via the spatie/laravel-markdown package.
- Adding accurate syntax highlighting to Markdown content processed with league/commonmark using the spatie/commonmark-shiki-highlighter extension.
- Highlighting code in Antlers or Blade templating languages, which are supported beyond Shiki's default languages.
- Creating custom code presentation with line-specific annotations like highlights, additions, deletions, or focus lines.
- Using custom VSCode theme JSON files to style code snippets consistently with an existing design system.
Not Ideal For
- Projects requiring a pure-PHP syntax highlighter without any Node.js dependencies
- Teams seeking a fully hosted or serverless highlighting service to minimize infrastructure management
- Environments where installing or running Node.js is prohibited or impractical, such as certain shared hosting setups
Pros & Cons
Pros
Leverages Shiki's TextMate grammar engine, ensuring highlighting matches VS Code's quality for over 100 languages, as noted in the README.
Includes extra syntax definitions for Antlers and Blade, beyond Shiki's defaults, making it ideal for Laravel and CMS developers.
Allows marking lines as highlighted, added, deleted, or focused, enabling detailed code annotations for tutorials or documentation.
Supports all Shiki themes and custom VSCode theme JSON files, providing complete styling control to align with design systems.
Cons
Requires Node.js and the Shiki npm package, adding complexity and potential setup issues, especially with NVM as admitted in the README.
Each highlight call executes a node process, which can be slower than in-process PHP highlighters and may not scale well for high-traffic sites.
Managing Node versions and creating symlinks for NVM users is cumbersome, leading to maintenance headaches and potential breakage.
Open Source Alternative To
Shiki PHP is an open-source alternative to the following products:
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Projects
ParsedownBetter Markdown Parser in PHP
PHP MarkdownParser for Markdown and Markdown Extra derived from the original Markdown.pl by John Gruber.
CommonMark PHPHighly-extensible PHP Markdown parser which fully supports the CommonMark and GFM specs.
HTML to MarkdownConvert HTML to Markdown with PHP
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