Cucumber:Gherkin syntax highlighting for Notepad++

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Jaco — 15 Comments ↓

### Introduction
Sometimes I want to edit a .feature file and don’t have Visual Studio handy, so I decided to create a syntax highlighter for [Notepad++][1].

[1]:http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Gherkin.zip 0.67 KB

Download

To install it, simply download and extract it. Open Notepad++ and open the *User Defined* dialogue from the *View* menu. Click on import and browse to the extracted Gherkin.xml file. If you open a .feature file from Notepad++, it should now have some color coding.

<NotepadPlus>
    <UserLang name="Gherkin" ext="feature">
        <Settings>
            <Global caseIgnored="no" />
            <TreatAsSymbol comment="no" commentLine="no" />
            <Prefix words1="no" words2="yes" words3="no" words4="no" />
        </Settings>
        <KeywordLists>
            <Keywords name="Delimiters"><00>00</Keywords>
            <Keywords name="Folder+"></Keywords>
            <Keywords name="Folder-"></Keywords>
            <Keywords name="Operators"></Keywords>
            <Keywords name="Comment"> 1 2 0|</Keywords>
            <Keywords name="Words1">Feature: Scenario: When Then And Given Examples: Scenario Outline: Background:</Keywords>
            <Keywords name="Words2">@</Keywords>
            <Keywords name="Words3"></Keywords>
            <Keywords name="Words4"></Keywords>
        </KeywordLists>
        <Styles>
            <WordsStyle name="DEFAULT" styleID="11" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="Consolas" fontStyle="0" fontSize="10" />
            <WordsStyle name="FOLDEROPEN" styleID="12" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" />
            <WordsStyle name="FOLDERCLOSE" styleID="13" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" />
            <WordsStyle name="KEYWORD1" styleID="5" fgColor="0000FF" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="Consolas" fontStyle="0" fontSize="10" />
            <WordsStyle name="KEYWORD2" styleID="6" fgColor="009393" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="Consolas" fontStyle="0" fontSize="10" />
            <WordsStyle name="KEYWORD3" styleID="7" fgColor="A80000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="Consolas" fontStyle="0" fontSize="10" />
            <WordsStyle name="KEYWORD4" styleID="8" fgColor="800000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" />
            <WordsStyle name="COMMENT" styleID="1" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="Consolas" fontStyle="0" fontSize="10" />
            <WordsStyle name="COMMENT LINE" styleID="2" fgColor="800000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="Consolas" fontStyle="0" fontSize="10" />
            <WordsStyle name="NUMBER" styleID="4" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" />
            <WordsStyle name="OPERATOR" styleID="10" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" />
            <WordsStyle name="DELIMINER1" styleID="14" fgColor="B70000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" />
            <WordsStyle name="DELIMINER2" styleID="15" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" />
            <WordsStyle name="DELIMINER3" styleID="16" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" />
        </Styles>
    </UserLang>
</NotepadPlus>

</Settings>

<Keywords name="Words1">Feature: Scenario: When Then And Given Examples: Scenario Outline: Background:</Keywords>

</KeywordLists>

</Styles>

</UserLang>

</NotepadPlus>

Posted in Blog, Develop

George Petrov

Hi, it seems that download is no longer available. I downloaded it some time before but now I can’t. Is it fixable or am I missing something?
- JacoSwarts
  
  Hi George
  
  I moved service providers and something must’ve gone wrong. I’ll be sure to make it available again.
  
  [image: DISQUS] http://disqus.com
  - shrikanth
    
    hi , how do i download this ?
    - JacoSwarts
      
      Just updated it, click the big download button above the second paragraph.
      - Matt Frear
        
        I can’t see the big download button.
      - JacoSwarts
        
        Seems that some update broke the button, should be back now.
Jeff Harding

Hi. I don’t see “User defined” under View, but I do under “Language” but I don’t think that is the right one. I just uploaded the newest version of Notepad++ so maybe it changed. Thanks
- JacoSwarts
  
  Hi Jeff
  I just upgraded my npp to 5.9.6.2 and under the View menu, the last link of the second section is the one, its called “User-Defined Dialogue…”
Anton

Thanks a lot for sharing this! I had to add it from under Languages menu.
Language-Define your…-Import and then restart NPP and reopen feature files.
- Ian Aldrighetti
  
  I’m using Notepad++ v6.7.7, and Anton is correct. It is NOT under View, it is under Language.
WS

Is there a way to get the comments highlighted as green?
- WS
  
  Not to worry, I have made a tweak that allows things to work slightly better in my cases…
  
  Line 13 becomes…
  
  1''' 2''' 0#
  
  Lines 27 and 28 become…
  
  <WordsStyle name="COMMENT" styleID="1" fgColor="800000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="Consolas" fontStyle="0" fontSize="10" />
  
  1
  2
  
  <WordsStyle name="COMMENT" styleID="1" fgColor="800000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="Consolas" fontStyle="0" fontSize="10" />
  
  Thanks.
  - WS
    
    The single apostrophes should be HTML Encoded (').
    
    The casing of the attributes in the original post should be preserved and the WordsStyle attributes should be self closing.
    
    (The editor doesn’t play nicely trying to make these changes myself).
James Taylor

I had an error when unzipping the download, until I explicitly used 7Zip.
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