EE-Syntax Blog Archive

mithra62 on GitHub

Nov 06 2012 | 1 Response

Today, I'm following the lead set out by Solspace and Exp:resso (among others) and releasing a bunch of goodies onto GitHub. I love the idea of making things easier and fun for users and developers and GitHub is a great place to do that.

First, all mithra62 add-ons that have language packs now have those language packs available on GitHub. This includes Backup Pro, Backup Pro(ish), CT Admin, Export It, Automat:ee, Securit:ee, and Flag Master. If you have any translations for those add-ons please do a pull request to make them available to the community. Oh, and all translators will receive a free license for the add-on they've translated once it's been officially merged with the repository so get on that multilingual EE people.

Next, with the exception of Backup Pro(ish), I've put the "free" add-ons onto GitHub. Right now, this includes EE Syntax and Meetup though any new free add-ons will be on GitHub as well. The only exception will be add-ons, like Backup Pro(ish), that are loss leaders and released to build awareness in another product. It just doesn't make sense to release add-ons like those on GitHub.

Hit me up if you have any questions or concerns.

Introducing EE-Syntax

Oct 03 2011 | 3 Responses

EE-Syntax is a code syntax highlighter for ExpressionEngine 2. EE-Syntax is a server side parser that uses Geshi for the highlighting so it supports any language that Geshi supports over 190 different programming languages. The specific goal with EE-Syntax was to enable me to write about code and since ExpressionEngine didn't have a server side syntax parser for ExpressionEngine 2 it just made sense to write a module.

EE-Syntax is a fork of WP-Syntax, the WordPress plugin, and hence is licensed under the GPL. Because it's built using WP-Syntax conventions any WordPress site that uses that plugin can have it's data imported into ExpressionEngine and have EE-Syntax still format and style their code without any issues.

Note that this is more a soft release right now; because this a 100% free and GPL licensed add-on it's taking a little bit of time to do an official release with it's own section and documentation sections with this site. For now, please use the below as a base.

Usage Example

EE-Syntax works by using template tags combined with HTML markup within an entry. For the template, you wrap the code you want to highlight like the below:

{exp:ee_syntax:add_head} 
{exp:ee_syntax:filter}
	{content_with_code}
{/exp:ee_syntax:filter}

Note that the {exp:ee_syntax:add_head} tag is used to include a default CSS style sheet. If you have your own CSS file you'll be using you can omit that tag.

Then, within your entries, you'll want to ensure the formatting is set to None and mark up your code like the below:

<pre lang="php" line="1">
if($foo)
{
 
}
elseif($bar)
{
 
}			   
</pre>

Now With Improved Docs

Oct 01 2011 | No Responses

Compared to the first weeks' HUGE amount of output (site launch, Backup Pro 1.8, Backup Pro(ish) and Backup Pro Developer) last week appears to have been a wash. Unless you've been paying close attention tt just looks that way. Last week had a bunch of small but needed improvements to this site along with a bunch of prep work in terms of new add-ons. Plus, lots of support requests and the fucking lawyers stealing my joy (and charging me for the pleasure).

In terms of site updates, there have been some really nice improvements to the add-on documentation as well as add-on main pages. First, the documentation has been updated for all add-ons to improve the formatting and readability. This actually led to a new add-on to be released this week for syntax highlighting (more on this below) that's released under the GPL. There's also improved galleries for the individual add-on pages with a couple bug fixes people experienced in Safari (which is pretty much everyone who cares about ExpressionEngine it turns out).

This week I'm planning on releasing EE-Syntax (the syntax highlighter mentioned above) and an update to Securit:ee that includes a new field type for encrypting and decrypting data.

EE-Syntax is to be released as a GPL licensed add-on and is a pretty direct port of one of my most used WordPress plugins WP-Syntax (hence the GPL license). Still, it should help ease the pain of other WordPress developers making the transition to ExpressionEngine so I'm pretty excited about releasing it. In fact, a lot of work went in to ensuring the two work identically so any existing WordPress blogs that used WP-Syntax shouldn't need any updates; something that's always good IMHO.

This is gonna be a good week.