AvalonEdit - xshd for JSON highlighting

Question

Is there an xshd ruleset for the AvalonEdit control to highlight the JSON syntax? I tried the definition for JavaScript, but it doesn't work well, i.e.:

{
   "name" : "value"
}

both name and value have the same color using the JavaScript definition.

Is there a ruleset for JSON, and if not, how can I modify the xshd so that I get different colors for the name and value in JSON?

Bosporus

Answer 1

If somebody needs something like that, I worked it out in following way:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<SyntaxDefinition name="Json" extensions=".js" xmlns="http://icsharpcode.net/sharpdevelop/syntaxdefinition/2008">
  <Color name="Digits" foreground="#8700FF" exampleText="3.14" />
  <Color name="Value" foreground="#000CFF" exampleText="var text = &quot;Hello, World!&quot;;" />
  <Color name="ParamName" foreground="#057500"  exampleText="var text = &quot;Hello, World!&quot;;" />
  <RuleSet ignoreCase="false">
    <Keywords color="Digits" >
      <Word>true</Word>
      <Word>false</Word>
    </Keywords>
    <Span color="ParamName">
      <Begin>"</Begin>
      <End>(?=:)</End>
    </Span>
    <Span color="Value" multiline="true">
      <Begin>
        (?&lt;=:)\040"[^"]*
      </Begin>
      <End>"</End>
    </Span>
    <Rule color="Digits">\b0[xX][0-9a-fA-F]+|(\b\d+(\.[0-9]+)?|\.[0-9]+)([eE][+-]?[0-9]+)?</Rule>
  </RuleSet>
</SyntaxDefinition>

Not perfect, but for me enough.

Bosporus

Thank you so much for this! I bound this to my view model and works beautifully. I'll no doubt extend it in future, but this is a great starting point! It would be great to get pull request into the AvalonEdit GitHub repository. – Foregoing

Just a heads up for anyone looking at this now: There is an official one here: github.com/icsharpcode/AvalonEdit/blob/master/… It hilites numbers, string, bools, etc all in different colors. – Ecospecies

Answer 2

Just use AvalonEdit's JavaScript highlighter.

Sample code:

using (var stream = Assembly.GetAssembly(typeof(ICSharpCode.AvalonEdit.TextEditor)).GetManifestResourceStream("ICSharpCode.AvalonEdit.Highlighting.Resources.JavaScript-Mode.xshd"))
{
    using (var reader = new XmlTextReader(stream))
    {
        avalonEdit.SyntaxHighlighting = HighlightingLoader.Load(reader, HighlightingManager.Instance);
        SearchPanel.Install(avalonEdit);
    }
}

Swore

From OP's question: "I tried the definition for JavaScript, but it doesn't work well." Your answer does not solve the issue. Also it's much easier to set the JavaScript xshd by calling ICSharpCode.AvalonEdit.Highlighting.HighlightingManager.Instance.GetDefinition("JavaScript"); – Cicely