HelpContents > HelpForUsers > HelpOnEditing > HelpOnParsers


Besides the default MoinMoin wiki markup, different parsers allow the user to enter content into a page or a page section which is interpreted differently. A MoinMoin wiki mostly will use the default wiki parser, which is described on HelpOnFormatting.

How formats are applied

Parsers go through the contents of a page to create a sequence of formatter calls which in sequence create some readable output. MoinMoin will choose the parser for a page using 2 different techniques:

  1. FORMAT Processing Instruction

    A #FORMAT processing instruction can be used to tell MoinMoin which parser to use for the whole page content. By default this is the wiki parser. Example:

    #FORMAT cplusplus
    ... some C++ source ...
  2. Code Display Regions - see HelpOnFormatting

    With the use of code display regions, a parser can be applied to only a part of a page (this was a processor region in earlier versions of MoinMoin). You specify which parser to call by using a bang path-like construct in the first line. A bang path is a concept known from Unix command line scripts, where they serve the exact same purpose: the first line tells the shell what program to start to process the remaining lines of the script. For example, the code

    {{{#!CSV ,
    produces the table:
    a b c
    d e f

(!) Note that there are 2 ways to solve nesting problems related to }}}:

For more information on the possible markup, see HelpOnEditing.


ParserBase is a parser utility class used to produce colorized source displays. It is easily extended. The HTML Formatter will render such code displays with switchable linenumbers, if the browser supports DOM and JavaScript.

A ParserBase colorization parser understands the following arguments to a #FORMAT pi or a hashbang line. Just add those arguments after the name of the parser (#FORMAT python start=10 step=10 numbers=on or #!python numbers=off).

if line numbers should be added. defaults to 'on'. possible values: 'on', 'off' (no line numbers, but javascript to add them), 'disable' (no line numbers at all)
where to start with numbering. defaults to 1
increment to the linenumber. defaults to 1

MoinMoin comes with a few examples from which you can go on:


See HelpOnCreoleSyntax.


Colorizes python code. It is not derived from ParserBase, but it allows the same arguments as the ParserBase parsers.

   1 def hello():
   2     print "Hello World!"

def hello():
    print "Hello World!"

def hello():
    print "Hello World!"


   1 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
   2   return 0;
   3 }


   1 import java.util.Date;
   2 import java.util.Calendar;
   4 public class IntDate
   5 {
   6   public static Date getDate(String year, String month, String day)
   7     {
   8       // Date(int, int, int) has been deprecated, so use Calendar to
   9       // set the year, month, and day.
  10       Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
  11       // Convert each argument to int.
  12       c.set(Integer.parseInt(year),Integer.parseInt(month),Integer.parseInt(day));
  13       return c.getTime();
  14     }
  15 }


   1 function TRegEx.Match(const s:string):boolean;
   2 var
   3     l,i : integer;
   4 begin
   5     result := MatchPos(s,l,i);
   6 end;


Puts an IRC log into a table.

   1 (23:18) <     jroes> ah
   2 (23:21) -!- gpciceri [] has quit [Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)]
   3 (23:36) < ThomasWal> you could also write a parser or processor
   4 (23:38) <     jroes> i could?
   5 (23:38) <     jroes> would that require modification on the moin end though?
   6 (23:38) <     jroes> i cant change the wiki myself :x

The format parsed is the log format of IRSSI, a popular console IRC client, but it should also match the log format of quite some other IRC clients.


The CSV parser works on so-called comma separated values, though the comma is now usually and by default a semicolon. The first line is considered to contain column titles that are rendered in bold, so when you don't want table headers, leave the first line empty.

The bang path can contain the following arguments:

The parser also supports the old, deprecated syntax for the bang path.

Example tables (please see the raw text of this page for the markup used):

MoinMoin 1.3 - clipping of the patch history:

patch-366 make _normalize_text public method Nir Soffer
patch-367 fixed failing test wikiutil: good system page names Nir Soffer
patch-368 Fixed DeprecationWarning in and an unused import in Alexander Schremmer
patch-369 remove duplicate code in formatter.base Thomas Waldmann
patch-370 fixed long int in mig3 Thomas Waldmann
patch-371 fixed unicode error on eventlog Nir Soffer
patch-372 fixed util.web.makeQueryString and Page.url Nir Soffer
patch-373 fixed again non ascii http_referer Nir Soffer
patch-374 supports different separators now Alexander Schremmer
patch-375 improved searchform behavior on Mozilla/Firefox Nir Soffer
patch-376 More correct script for actions menu init Nir Soffer

MoinMoin Version History:

Version Date
0.11 2002-03-11
0.10 2001-10-28
0.9 2001-05-07
0.8 2001-01-23
0.7 2000-12-06
0.6 2000-12-04
0.5 2000-11-17
0.4 2000-11-01
0.3 2000-10-25
0.2 2000-08-26
0.1 2000-07-29


See /ReStructuredText


See HelpOnXmlPages.

Additional Parsers

For many more parsers and installation instructions, see ParserMarket