[Tex/LaTex] How to highlight YAML code in a pretty way with listings

highlightinglistings

I'm trying to highlight simple YAML (the markup language, not the CSS framework) code. I know that there is a solution using pygments and minted, however, I would prefer a solution with \lstdefinelanguage.

This is my code so far:

\lstdefinelanguage{yaml}{
  keywords={true,false,null,y,n},
  keywordstyle=\color{darkgray}\bfseries,
  ndkeywords={},
  ndkeywordstyle=\color{black}\bfseries,
  identifierstyle=\color{black},
  sensitive=false,
  %moredelim=[l]{}{:},
  comment=[l]{#},
  morecomment=[s]{/*}{*/},
  commentstyle=\color{purple}\ttfamily,
  stringstyle=\color{blue}\ttfamily,
  %morestring=[l]{-}{},
  morestring=[b]',
  morestring=[b]"
}

Two things are missing, though:

  1. I would like to print all keys bold
  2. I would like to print all strings, also the ones without qotes, to be blue.

I tried to accomplish these two things with the commented lines in the code above. Unfortunately, they did not work. Any suggestions on how I can make this work?

Here is a small YAML example:

key: value
map:
    key1: value1
    key2: value2
list:
  - element1
  - element2
# This is a comment
listOfMaps:
  - key1: value1a
    key2: value1b
  - key1: value2a
    key2: value2b

This is the output I currently get:

enter image description here

Best Answer

Here is a partial solution involving some juggling with the literate and moredelim keys. The values, if delimited by double quotes, can contain colons.

Caveat: values that span multiple lines won't be correctly highlighted.

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[dvipsnames]{xcolor}
\usepackage{listings}

\newcommand\YAMLcolonstyle{\color{red}\mdseries}
\newcommand\YAMLkeystyle{\color{black}\bfseries}
\newcommand\YAMLvaluestyle{\color{blue}\mdseries}

\makeatletter

% here is a macro expanding to the name of the language
% (handy if you decide to change it further down the road)
\newcommand\language@yaml{yaml}

\expandafter\expandafter\expandafter\lstdefinelanguage
\expandafter{\language@yaml}
{
  keywords={true,false,null,y,n},
  keywordstyle=\color{darkgray}\bfseries,
  basicstyle=\YAMLkeystyle,                                 % assuming a key comes first
  sensitive=false,
  comment=[l]{\#},
  morecomment=[s]{/*}{*/},
  commentstyle=\color{purple}\ttfamily,
  stringstyle=\YAMLvaluestyle\ttfamily,
  moredelim=[l][\color{orange}]{\&},
  moredelim=[l][\color{magenta}]{*},
  moredelim=**[il][\YAMLcolonstyle{:}\YAMLvaluestyle]{:},   % switch to value style at :
  morestring=[b]',
  morestring=[b]",
  literate =    {---}{{\ProcessThreeDashes}}3
                {>}{{\textcolor{red}\textgreater}}1     
                {|}{{\textcolor{red}\textbar}}1 
                {\ -\ }{{\mdseries\ -\ }}3,
}

% switch to key style at EOL
\lst@AddToHook{EveryLine}{\ifx\lst@language\language@yaml\YAMLkeystyle\fi}
\makeatother

\newcommand\ProcessThreeDashes{\llap{\color{cyan}\mdseries-{-}-}}

\begin{document}

\begin{lstlisting}[language=yaml]
---
key: value
map:
    key1: "foo:bar"
    key2: value2
list:
  - element1
  - element2
# This is a comment
listOfMaps:
  - key1: value1a
    key2: value1b
  - key1: value2a
    key2: value2b
---
\end{lstlisting}

\begin{lstlisting}[frame=single]
some
other
listing
\end{lstlisting}

\end{document}
Related Question