CSS Syntax Highlighting in .PHP Files

[joemichaud]

Hi All,

I am developing for a content management system called Expression Engine and have one little issue for which I am unable to find a graceful solution. The CMS can be directed to save all of its templates - normally stored in the database - to flat files for development purposes.

On the whole this works great and allows me to edit with my beloved Webuilder and see my site in the preview pane exactly it would appear on the live site (thanks to the "Mappings" feature).

The PROBLEM is that the CMS saves all template files with the .PHP extension... so no syntax highlighting or auto-completion in CSS files. If I change the file extension then I loose several important advantages that I would rather not give up...

Is there an elegant solution? Is there some way to declare that a file is CSS inside of a comment block or something like that? Any help is greatly appreciated!!

[Karlis]

You can not have some PHP files viewed as PHP files and then some other PHP files viewed as CSS. Either you define all PHP files as CSS (which can be done) or leave them as is.

OR (idea) you could append <style> and </style> before and after CSS code.

[joemichaud]

Thanks Karlis!

Surrounding the CSS with a <style> block does the trick and everything works great in Expression Engine! Although I have not yet tried, I am willing to bet I can do something similar with Javascript pages - except surround them with a <script> block.

Just FYI, I think the Expression Engine community may be a great opportunity for Blumentals Software... It is a commercial open source CMS, very reasonably priced, and gaining popularity very quickly. Your software works very well as a development platform for EE and it may be worth your while to take a look. It may be very easy for you to integrate EE tags into your code parsing and auto-completion - then market to EE developers.

Best Regards,

[Karlis]

Thanks. I'll give it a thought when some spare chunk of time pops up.