Available formatters — Pygments

- Home
- Languages
- Styles
- FAQ
- Get it
- Docs

# Available formatters

This page lists all builtin formatters.

## Common options

All formatters support these options:

encoding

  If given, must be an encoding name (such as `"utf-8"`). This will be used to convert the token strings (which are Unicode strings) to byte strings in the output (default: `None`). It will also be written in an encoding declaration suitable for the document format if the full option is given (e.g. a `meta content-type` directive in HTML or an invocation of the inputenc package in LaTeX).

  If this is `""` or `None`, Unicode strings will be written to the output file, which most file-like objects do not support. For example, pygments.highlight() will return a Unicode string if called with no outfile argument and a formatter that has encoding set to `None` because it uses a StringIO.StringIO object that supports Unicode arguments to write(). Using a regular file object wouldn’t work.

  New in version 0.6.

outencoding

  When using Pygments from the command line, any encoding option given is passed to the lexer and the formatter. This is sometimes not desirable, for example if you want to set the input encoding to `"guess"`. Therefore, outencoding has been introduced which overrides encoding for the formatter if given.

  New in version 0.7.

## Formatter classes

All these classes are importable from `pygments.formatters`.

class BBCodeFormatter
  Short names:

    bbcode, bb

  Filenames:

    None

  Format tokens with BBcodes. These formatting codes are used by many bulletin boards, so you can highlight your sourcecode with pygments before posting it there.

  This formatter has no support for background colors and borders, as there are no common BBcode tags for that.

  Some board systems (e.g. phpBB) don’t support colors in their [code] tag, so you can’t use the highlighting together with that tag. Text in a [code] tag usually is shown with a monospace font (which this formatter can do with the `monofont` option) and no spaces (which you need for indentation) are removed.

  Additional options accepted:

  style

    The style to use, can be a string or a Style subclass (default: `'default'`).

  codetag

    If set to true, put the output into `[code]` tags (default: `false`)

  monofont

    If set to true, add a tag to show the code with a monospace font (default: `false`).

class BmpImageFormatter
  Short names:

    bmp, bitmap

  Filenames:

    *.bmp

  Create a bitmap image from source code. This uses the Python Imaging Library to generate a pixmap from the source code.

  New in version 1.0.

class GifImageFormatter
  Short names:

    gif

  Filenames:

    *.gif

  Create a GIF image from source code. This uses the Python Imaging Library to generate a pixmap from the source code.

  New in version 1.0.

class GroffFormatter
  Short names:

    groff, troff, roff

  Filenames:

    None

  Format tokens with groff escapes to change their color and font style.

  New in version 2.11.

  Additional options accepted:

  style

    The style to use, can be a string or a Style subclass (default: `'default'`).

  monospaced

    If set to true, monospace font will be used (default: `true`).

  linenos

    If set to true, print the line numbers (default: `false`).

  wrap

    Wrap lines to the specified number of characters. Disabled if set to 0 (default: `0`).

class HtmlFormatter
  Short names:

    html

  Filenames:

    *.html, *.htm

  Format tokens as HTML 4 `<span>` tags. By default, the content is enclosed in a `<pre>` tag, itself wrapped in a `<div>` tag (but see the nowrap option). The `<div>`’s CSS class can be set by the cssclass option.

  If the linenos option is set to `"table"`, the `<pre>` is additionally wrapped inside a `<table>` which has one row and two cells: one containing the line numbers and one containing the code. Example:

      <div class="highlight" >
      <table><tr>
        <td class="linenos" title="click to toggle"
          onclick="with (this.firstChild.style)
                   { display = (display == '') ? 'none' : '' }">
          <pre>1
          2</pre>
        </td>
        <td class="code">
          <pre><span class="Ke">def </span><span class="NaFu">foo</span>(bar):
            <span class="Ke">pass</span>
          </pre>
        </td>
      </tr></table></div>

  (whitespace added to improve clarity).

  A list of lines can be specified using the hl_lines option to make these lines highlighted (as of Pygments 0.11).

  With the full option, a complete HTML 4 document is output, including the style definitions inside a `<style>` tag, or in a separate file if the cssfile option is given.

  When tagsfile is set to the path of a ctags index file, it is used to generate hyperlinks from names to their definition. You must enable lineanchors and run ctags with the -n option for this to work. The python-ctags module from PyPI must be installed to use this feature; otherwise a RuntimeError will be raised.

  The get_style_defs(arg=’’) method of a HtmlFormatter returns a string containing CSS rules for the CSS classes used by the formatter. The argument arg can be used to specify additional CSS selectors that are prepended to the classes. A call fmter.get_style_defs(‘td .code’) would result in the following CSS classes:

      td .code .kw { font-weight: bold; color: #00FF00 }
      td .code .cm { color: #999999 }
      ...

  If you have Pygments 0.6 or higher, you can also pass a list or tuple to the get_style_defs() method to request multiple prefixes for the tokens:

      formatter.get_style_defs(['div.syntax pre', 'pre.syntax'])

  The output would then look like this:

      div.syntax pre .kw,
      pre.syntax .kw { font-weight: bold; color: #00FF00 }
      div.syntax pre .cm,
      pre.syntax .cm { color: #999999 }
      ...

  Additional options accepted:

  nowrap

    If set to `True`, don’t add a `<pre>` and a `<div>` tag around the tokens. This disables most other options (default: `False`).

  full

    Tells the formatter to output a “full” document, i.e. a complete self-contained document (default: `False`).

  title

    If full is true, the title that should be used to caption the document (default: `''`).

  style

    The style to use, can be a string or a Style subclass (default: `'default'`). This option has no effect if the cssfile and noclobber_cssfile option are given and the file specified in cssfile exists.

  noclasses

    If set to true, token `<span>` tags (as well as line number elements) will not use CSS classes, but inline styles. This is not recommended for larger pieces of code since it increases output size by quite a bit (default: `False`).

  classprefix

    Since the token types use relatively short class names, they may clash with some of your own class names. In this case you can use the classprefix option to give a string to prepend to all Pygments-generated CSS class names for token types. Note that this option also affects the output of get_style_defs().

  cssclass

    CSS class for the wrapping `<div>` tag (default: `'highlight'`). If you set this option, the default selector for get_style_defs() will be this class.

    New in version 0.9: If you select the `'table'` line numbers, the wrapping table will have a CSS class of this string plus `'table'`, the default is accordingly `'highlighttable'`.

  cssstyles

    Inline CSS styles for the wrapping `<div>` tag (default: `''`).

  prestyles

    Inline CSS styles for the `<pre>` tag (default: `''`).

    New in version 0.11.

  cssfile

    If the full option is true and this option is given, it must be the name of an external file. If the filename does not include an absolute path, the file’s path will be assumed to be relative to the main output file’s path, if the latter can be found. The stylesheet is then written to this file instead of the HTML file.

    New in version 0.6.

  noclobber_cssfile

    If cssfile is given and the specified file exists, the css file will not be overwritten. This allows the use of the full option in combination with a user specified css file. Default is `False`.

    New in version 1.1.

  linenos

    If set to `'table'`, output line numbers as a table with two cells, one containing the line numbers, the other the whole code. This is copy-and-paste-friendly, but may cause alignment problems with some browsers or fonts. If set to `'inline'`, the line numbers will be integrated in the `<pre>` tag that contains the code (that setting is new in Pygments 0.8).

    For compatibility with Pygments 0.7 and earlier, every true value except `'inline'` means the same as `'table'` (in particular, that means also `True`).

    The default value is `False`, which means no line numbers at all.

    Note: with the default (“table”) line number mechanism, the line numbers and code can have different line heights in Internet Explorer unless you give the enclosing `<pre>` tags an explicit `line-height` CSS property (you get the default line spacing with `line-height: 125%`).

  hl_lines

    Specify a list of lines to be highlighted. The line numbers are always relative to the input (i.e. the first line is line 1) and are independent of linenostart.

    New in version 0.11.

  linenostart

    The line number for the first line (default: `1`).

  linenostep

    If set to a number n > 1, only every nth line number is printed.

  linenospecial

    If set to a number n > 0, every nth line number is given the CSS class `"special"` (default: `0`).

  nobackground

    If set to `True`, the formatter won’t output the background color for the wrapping element (this automatically defaults to `False` when there is no wrapping element [eg: no argument for the get_syntax_defs method given]) (default: `False`).

    New in version 0.6.

  lineseparator

    This string is output between lines of code. It defaults to `"\n"`, which is enough to break a line inside `<pre>` tags, but you can e.g. set it to `"<br>"` to get HTML line breaks.

    New in version 0.7.

  lineanchors

    If set to a nonempty string, e.g. `foo`, the formatter will wrap each output line in an anchor tag with an `id` (and name) of `foo-linenumber`. This allows easy linking to certain lines.

    New in version 0.9.

  linespans

    If set to a nonempty string, e.g. `foo`, the formatter will wrap each output line in a span tag with an `id` of `foo-linenumber`. This allows easy access to lines via javascript.

    New in version 1.6.

  anchorlinenos

    If set to True, will wrap line numbers in <a> tags. Used in combination with linenos and lineanchors.

  tagsfile

    If set to the path of a ctags file, wrap names in anchor tags that link to their definitions. lineanchors should be used, and the tags file should specify line numbers (see the -n option to ctags). The tags file is assumed to be encoded in UTF-8.

    New in version 1.6.

  tagurlformat

    A string formatting pattern used to generate links to ctags definitions. Available variables are %(path)s, %(fname)s and %(fext)s. Defaults to an empty string, resulting in just #prefix-number links.

    New in version 1.6.

  filename

    A string used to generate a filename when rendering `<pre>` blocks, for example if displaying source code. If linenos is set to `'table'` then the filename will be rendered in an initial row containing a single <th> which spans both columns.

    New in version 2.1.

  wrapcode

    Wrap the code inside `<pre>` blocks using `<code>`, as recommended by the HTML5 specification.

    New in version 2.4.

  debug_token_types

    Add `title` attributes to all token `<span>` tags that show the name of the token.

    New in version 2.10.

  Subclassing the HTML formatter

  New in version 0.7.

  The HTML formatter is now built in a way that allows easy subclassing, thus customizing the output HTML code. The format() method calls self._format_lines() which returns a generator that yields tuples of `(1, line)`, where the `1` indicates that the `line` is a line of the formatted source code.

  If the nowrap option is set, the generator is the iterated over and the resulting HTML is output.

  Otherwise, format() calls self.wrap(), which wraps the generator with other generators. These may add some HTML code to the one generated by _format_lines(), either by modifying the lines generated by the latter, then yielding them again with `(1, line)`, and/or by yielding other HTML code before or after the lines, with `(0, html)`. The distinction between source lines and other code makes it possible to wrap the generator multiple times.

  The default wrap() implementation adds a `<div>` and a `<pre>` tag.

  A custom HtmlFormatter subclass could look like this:

      class CodeHtmlFormatter(HtmlFormatter):

          def wrap(self, source, *, include_div):
              return self._wrap_code(source)

          def _wrap_code(self, source):
              yield 0, '<code>'
              for i, t in source:
                  if i == 1:
                      # it's a line of formatted code
                      t += '<br>'
                  yield i, t
              yield 0, '</code>'

  This results in wrapping the formatted lines with a `<code>` tag, where the source lines are broken using `<br>` tags.

  After calling wrap(), the format() method also adds the “line numbers” and/or “full document” wrappers if the respective options are set. Then, all HTML yielded by the wrapped generator is output.

class IRCFormatter
  Short names:

    irc, IRC

  Filenames:

    None

  Format tokens with IRC color sequences

  The get_style_defs() method doesn’t do anything special since there is no support for common styles.

  Options accepted:

  bg

    Set to `"light"` or `"dark"` depending on the terminal’s background (default: `"light"`).

  colorscheme

    A dictionary mapping token types to (lightbg, darkbg) color names or `None` (default: `None` = use builtin colorscheme).

  linenos

    Set to `True` to have line numbers in the output as well (default: `False` = no line numbers).

class ImageFormatter
  Short names:

    img, IMG, png

  Filenames:

    *.png

  Create a PNG image from source code. This uses the Python Imaging Library to generate a pixmap from the source code.

  New in version 0.10.

  Additional options accepted:

  image_format

    An image format to output to that is recognised by PIL, these include:

    - “PNG” (default)

    - “JPEG”

    - “BMP”

    - “GIF”

  line_pad

    The extra spacing (in pixels) between each line of text.

    Default: 2

  font_name

    The font name to be used as the base font from which others, such as bold and italic fonts will be generated. This really should be a monospace font to look sane. If a filename or a file-like object is specified, the user must provide different styles of the font.

    Default: “Courier New” on Windows, “Menlo” on Mac OS, and

      “DejaVu Sans Mono” on *nix

  font_size

    The font size in points to be used.

    Default: 14

  image_pad

    The padding, in pixels to be used at each edge of the resulting image.

    Default: 10

  line_numbers

    Whether line numbers should be shown: True/False

    Default: True

  line_number_start

    The line number of the first line.

    Default: 1

  line_number_step

    The step used when printing line numbers.

    Default: 1

  line_number_bg

    The background colour (in “#123456” format) of the line number bar, or None to use the style background color.

    Default: “#eed”

  line_number_fg

    The text color of the line numbers (in “#123456”-like format).

    Default: “#886”

  line_number_chars

    The number of columns of line numbers allowable in the line number margin.

    Default: 2

  line_number_bold

    Whether line numbers will be bold: True/False

    Default: False

  line_number_italic

    Whether line numbers will be italicized: True/False

    Default: False

  line_number_separator

    Whether a line will be drawn between the line number area and the source code area: True/False

    Default: True

  line_number_pad

    The horizontal padding (in pixels) between the line number margin, and the source code area.

    Default: 6

  hl_lines

    Specify a list of lines to be highlighted.

    New in version 1.2.

    Default: empty list

  hl_color

    Specify the color for highlighting lines.

    New in version 1.2.

    Default: highlight color of the selected style

class JpgImageFormatter
  Short names:

    jpg, jpeg

  Filenames:

    *.jpg

  Create a JPEG image from source code. This uses the Python Imaging Library to generate a pixmap from the source code.

  New in version 1.0.

class LatexFormatter
  Short names:

    latex, tex

  Filenames:

    *.tex

  Format tokens as LaTeX code. This needs the fancyvrb and color standard packages.

  Without the full option, code is formatted as one `Verbatim` environment, like this:

      \begin{Verbatim}[commandchars=\\\{\}]
      \PY{k}{def }\PY{n+nf}{foo}(\PY{n}{bar}):
          \PY{k}{pass}
      \end{Verbatim}

  Wrapping can be disabled using the nowrap option.

  The special command used here (`\PY`) and all the other macros it needs are output by the get_style_defs method.

  With the full option, a complete LaTeX document is output, including the command definitions in the preamble.

  The get_style_defs() method of a LatexFormatter returns a string containing `\def` commands defining the macros needed inside the `Verbatim` environments.

  Additional options accepted:

  nowrap

    If set to `True`, don’t wrap the tokens at all, not even inside a `\begin{Verbatim}` environment. This disables most other options (default: `False`).

  style

    The style to use, can be a string or a Style subclass (default: `'default'`).

  full

    Tells the formatter to output a “full” document, i.e. a complete self-contained document (default: `False`).

  title

    If full is true, the title that should be used to caption the document (default: `''`).

  docclass

    If the full option is enabled, this is the document class to use (default: `'article'`).

  preamble

    If the full option is enabled, this can be further preamble commands, e.g. `\usepackage` (default: `''`).

  linenos

    If set to `True`, output line numbers (default: `False`).

  linenostart

    The line number for the first line (default: `1`).

  linenostep

    If set to a number n > 1, only every nth line number is printed.

  verboptions

    Additional options given to the Verbatim environment (see the fancyvrb docs for possible values) (default: `''`).

  commandprefix

    The LaTeX commands used to produce colored output are constructed using this prefix and some letters (default: `'PY'`).

    New in version 0.7.

    Changed in version 0.10: The default is now `'PY'` instead of `'C'`.

  texcomments

    If set to `True`, enables LaTeX comment lines. That is, LaTex markup in comment tokens is not escaped so that LaTeX can render it (default: `False`).

    New in version 1.2.

  mathescape

    If set to `True`, enables LaTeX math mode escape in comments. That is, `'$...$'` inside a comment will trigger math mode (default: `False`).

    New in version 1.2.

  escapeinside

    If set to a string of length 2, enables escaping to LaTeX. Text delimited by these 2 characters is read as LaTeX code and typeset accordingly. It has no effect in string literals. It has no effect in comments if texcomments or mathescape is set. (default: `''`).

    New in version 2.0.

  envname

    Allows you to pick an alternative environment name replacing Verbatim. The alternate environment still has to support Verbatim’s option syntax. (default: `'Verbatim'`).

    New in version 2.0.

class NullFormatter
  Short names:

    text, null

  Filenames:

    *.txt

  Output the text unchanged without any formatting.

class PangoMarkupFormatter
  Short names:

    pango, pangomarkup

  Filenames:

    None

  Format tokens as Pango Markup code. It can then be rendered to an SVG.

  New in version 2.9.

class RawTokenFormatter
  Short names:

    raw, tokens

  Filenames:

    *.raw

  Format tokens as a raw representation for storing token streams.

  The format is `tokentype<TAB>repr(tokenstring)\n`. The output can later be converted to a token stream with the RawTokenLexer, described in the lexer list.

  Only two options are accepted:

  compress

    If set to `'gz'` or `'bz2'`, compress the output with the given compression algorithm after encoding (default: `''`).

  error_color

    If set to a color name, highlight error tokens using that color. If set but with no value, defaults to `'red'`.

    New in version 0.11.

class RtfFormatter
  Short names:

    rtf

  Filenames:

    *.rtf

  Format tokens as RTF markup. This formatter automatically outputs full RTF documents with color information and other useful stuff. Perfect for Copy and Paste into Microsoft(R) Word(R) documents.

  Please note that `encoding` and `outencoding` options are ignored. The RTF format is ASCII natively, but handles unicode characters correctly thanks to escape sequences.

  New in version 0.6.

  Additional options accepted:

  style

    The style to use, can be a string or a Style subclass (default: `'default'`).

  fontface

    The used font family, for example `Bitstream Vera Sans`. Defaults to some generic font which is supposed to have fixed width.

  fontsize

    Size of the font used. Size is specified in half points. The default is 24 half-points, giving a size 12 font.

    New in version 2.0.

class SvgFormatter
  Short names:

    svg

  Filenames:

    *.svg

  Format tokens as an SVG graphics file. This formatter is still experimental. Each line of code is a `<text>` element with explicit `x` and `y` coordinates containing `<tspan>` elements with the individual token styles.

  By default, this formatter outputs a full SVG document including doctype declaration and the `<svg>` root element.

  New in version 0.9.

  Additional options accepted:

  nowrap

    Don’t wrap the SVG `<text>` elements in `<svg><g>` elements and don’t add a XML declaration and a doctype. If true, the fontfamily and fontsize options are ignored. Defaults to `False`.

  fontfamily

    The value to give the wrapping `<g>` element’s `font-family` attribute, defaults to `"monospace"`.

  fontsize

    The value to give the wrapping `<g>` element’s `font-size` attribute, defaults to `"14px"`.

  linenos

    If `True`, add line numbers (default: `False`).

  linenostart

    The line number for the first line (default: `1`).

  linenostep

    If set to a number n > 1, only every nth line number is printed.

  linenowidth

    Maximum width devoted to line numbers (default: `3*ystep`, sufficient for up to 4-digit line numbers. Increase width for longer code blocks).

  xoffset

    Starting offset in X direction, defaults to `0`.

  yoffset

    Starting offset in Y direction, defaults to the font size if it is given in pixels, or `20` else. (This is necessary since text coordinates refer to the text baseline, not the top edge.)

  ystep

    Offset to add to the Y coordinate for each subsequent line. This should roughly be the text size plus 5. It defaults to that value if the text size is given in pixels, or `25` else.

  spacehack

    Convert spaces in the source to `&#160;`, which are non-breaking spaces. SVG provides the `xml:space` attribute to control how whitespace inside tags is handled, in theory, the `preserve` value could be used to keep all whitespace as-is. However, many current SVG viewers don’t obey that rule, so this option is provided as a workaround and defaults to `True`.

class Terminal256Formatter
  Short names:

    terminal256, console256, 256

  Filenames:

    None

  Format tokens with ANSI color sequences, for output in a 256-color terminal or console. Like in TerminalFormatter color sequences are terminated at newlines, so that paging the output works correctly.

  The formatter takes colors from a style defined by the style option and converts them to nearest ANSI 256-color escape sequences. Bold and underline attributes from the style are preserved (and displayed).

  New in version 0.9.

  Changed in version 2.2: If the used style defines foreground colors in the form `#ansi*`, then Terminal256Formatter will map these to non extended foreground color. See Terminal Styles for more information.

  Changed in version 2.4: The ANSI color names have been updated with names that are easier to understand and align with colornames of other projects and terminals. See this table for more information.

  Options accepted:

  style

    The style to use, can be a string or a Style subclass (default: `'default'`).

  linenos

    Set to `True` to have line numbers on the terminal output as well (default: `False` = no line numbers).

class TerminalFormatter
  Short names:

    terminal, console

  Filenames:

    None

  Format tokens with ANSI color sequences, for output in a text console. Color sequences are terminated at newlines, so that paging the output works correctly.

  The get_style_defs() method doesn’t do anything special since there is no support for common styles.

  Options accepted:

  bg

    Set to `"light"` or `"dark"` depending on the terminal’s background (default: `"light"`).

  colorscheme

    A dictionary mapping token types to (lightbg, darkbg) color names or `None` (default: `None` = use builtin colorscheme).

  linenos

    Set to `True` to have line numbers on the terminal output as well (default: `False` = no line numbers).

class TerminalTrueColorFormatter
  Short names:

    terminal16m, console16m, 16m

  Filenames:

    None

  Format tokens with ANSI color sequences, for output in a true-color terminal or console. Like in TerminalFormatter color sequences are terminated at newlines, so that paging the output works correctly.

  New in version 2.1.

  Options accepted:

  style

    The style to use, can be a string or a Style subclass (default: `'default'`).

class TestcaseFormatter
  Short names:

    testcase

  Filenames:

    None

  Format tokens as appropriate for a new testcase.

  New in version 2.0.