Github-flavored markdown mode: syntax highlight code blocks

Question

For example, if I have a markdown file with the following:

###This is my markdown file
here is some text.
here is my code block:

``` js
var accountdown = require('accountdown');
var level = require('level');
var db = level('/tmp/users.db');

var users = accountdown(db, {
    login: { basic: require('accountdown-basic') }
});

var user = process.argv[2];
var pass = process.argv[3];
var bio = process.argv[4];

var opts = {
    login: { basic: { username: user, password: pass } },
    value: { bio: bio }
};
users.create(user, opts, function (err) {
    if (err) console.error(err);
});
```

How can I enable highlighting in the code block?

Perhaps it's unrelated, but org-mode can highlight source code blocks as follows:

(org-babel-do-load-languages
      'org-babel-load-languages
      '((python . t)
        (js . t)
        (R . t)))

Answer 1

Native syntax highlighting of code blocks is now part of the current development version of Markdown mode. Specifically, it works for those GFM or tilde-fenced code blocks for which the language name has been specified, like the JavaScript code block in your question. You can toggle this mode with C-c C-x C-f (markdown-toggle-fontify-code-blocks-natively). You can set the default behavior by customizing the variable markdown-fontify-code-blocks-natively. For example:

(setq markdown-fontify-code-blocks-natively t)