prettier

What is prettier?

Prettier is an opinionated code formatter that supports many languages and integrates with most editors. It removes all original styling and ensures that all outputted code conforms to a consistent style.

What are prettier's main functionalities?

Code Formatting

Formats all .js files in the src directory and its subdirectories. When run, this command will process each JavaScript file and reformat it according to Prettier's rules.

prettier --write 'src/**/*.js'

Configuration Overrides

Allows customization of Prettier's default formatting rules. For example, this JSON configuration disables semicolons at the end of statements and enforces single quotes.

{
  'semi': false,
  'singleQuote': true
}

Ignoring Code

You can prevent a section of code from being formatted by Prettier by adding a special comment, `// prettier-ignore`, before it.

// prettier-ignore
let untouched = 'This code will not be formatted by Prettier.';

Integration with Editors

Prettier can be integrated into many code editors to automatically format files on save or during editing, enhancing the developer's workflow.

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Support for Multiple Languages

Prettier supports a wide range of languages and frameworks, including but not limited to JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS, HTML, and Markdown, making it a versatile tool for many developers.

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Other packages similar to prettier

eslint

ESLint is a tool for identifying and reporting on patterns found in ECMAScript/JavaScript code, with the ability to fix many issues automatically. While it can also format code, its primary focus is on code quality and adherence to coding standards, unlike Prettier which is solely focused on code formatting.

stylelint

Stylelint is a modern linter that helps you avoid errors and enforce conventions in your stylesheets. It is to CSS what ESLint is to JavaScript, and while it can fix code style issues, it is more focused on maintaining code quality rather than just formatting.

beautify

Beautify, available as 'js-beautify' for npm, is a code beautifier that can format HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It is less opinionated than Prettier and offers more configuration options, but it might not enforce as consistent a style as Prettier does.

standard

Standard is a JavaScript style guide, linter, and formatter that enforces a strict coding standard. Unlike Prettier, Standard also includes rules that aim to prevent bugs and improve code clarity.

README

Prettier

Prettier is an opinionated JavaScript formatter inspired by refmt with advanced support for language features from ES2017, JSX, and Flow. It removes all original styling and ensures that all outputted JavaScript conforms to a consistent style. (See this blog post)

Warning: This is a beta, and the format may change over time. If you aren't OK with the format changing, wait for a more stable version.

This goes way beyond eslint and other projects built on it. Unlike eslint, there aren't a million configuration options and rules. But more importantly: everything is fixable. This works because prettier never "checks" anything; it takes JavaScript as input and outputs the formatted JavaScript as output.

In technical terms: prettier parses your JavaScript into an AST and pretty-prints the AST, completely ignoring any of the original formatting. Say hello to completely consistent syntax!

There's an extremely important piece missing from existing styling tools: the maximum line length. Sure, you can tell eslint to warn you when you have a line that's too long, but that's an after-thought (eslint never knows how to fix it). The maximum line length is a critical piece the formatter needs for laying out and wrapping code.

For example, take the following code:

foo(arg1, arg2, arg3);

That looks like the right way to format it. However, we've all run into this situation:

foo(reallyLongArg(), omgSoManyParameters(), IShouldRefactorThis(), isThereSeriouslyAnotherOne());

Suddenly our previous format for calling function breaks down because this is too long. What you would probably do is this instead:

foo(
  reallyLongArg(),
  omgSoManyParameters(),
  IShouldRefactorThis(),
  isThereSeriouslyAnotherOne()
);

This clearly shows that the maximum line length has a direct impact on the style of code we desire. The fact that current style tools ignore this means they can't really help with the situations that are actually the most troublesome. Individuals on teams will all format these differently according to their own rules and we lose the consistency we sought after.

Even if we disregard line widths, it's too easy to sneak in various styles of code in all other linters. The most strict linter I know happily lets all these styles happen:

foo({ num: 3 },
  1, 2)

foo(
  { num: 3 },
  1, 2)

foo(
  { num: 3 },
  1,
  2
)

Prettier bans all custom styling by parsing it away and re-printing the parsed AST with its own rules that take the maximum line width into account, wrapping code when necessary.

Usage

Install:

npm install [-g] prettier

You can install it globally if you like.

CLI

Run prettier through the CLI with this script. Run it without any arguments to see the options.

To format a file in-place, use --write. While this is in beta you should probably commit your code before doing that. In the future we will have better support for formatting whole projects.

prettier <opts> <filename>

API

The API is a single function exported as format. The options argument is optional, and all of the defaults are shown below:

const prettier = require("prettier");

prettier.format(source, {
  // Fit code within this line limit
  printWidth: 80,

  // Number of spaces it should use per tab
  tabWidth: 2

  // Use the flow parser instead of babylon
  useFlowParser: false,

  // If true, will use single instead of double quotes
  singleQuote: false,

  // Controls the printing of trailing commas wherever possible
  trailingComma: false,

  // Controls the printing of spaces inside array and objects
  bracketSpacing: true
});

Atom

Atom users can simply install the prettier-atom package and use ctrl+alt+f to format a file (or format on save if turned on).

Emacs

Emacs users should see this folder for on-demand formatting.

More editors are coming soon.

Language Support

Prettier attempts to support all JavaScript language features, including non-standardized ones. By default it uses the babylon parser with all language features enabled, but you can also use flow parser with the useFlowParser API or --flow-parser CLI option.

All of JSX and Flow syntax is supported. In fact, the test suite in tests is the entire Flow test suite and they all pass.

Technical Details

This printer is a fork of recast's printer with it's algorithm replaced by the one described by Wadler in "A prettier printer". There still may be leftover code from recast that needs to be cleaned up.

The basic idea is that the printer takes an AST and returns an intermediate representation of the output, and the printer uses that to generate a string. The advantage is that the printer can "measure" the IR and see if the output is going to fit on a line, and break if not.

This means that most of the logic of printing an AST involves generating an abstract representation of the output involving certain commands. For example, concat(["(", line, arg, line ")"]) would represent a concatentation of opening parens, an argument, and closing parens. But if that doesn't fit on one line, the printer can break where line is specified.

More (rough) details can be found in commands.md. Better docs will come soon.

Contributing

We will work on better docs over time, but in the mean time, here are a few notes if you are interested in contributing:

• You should be able to get up and running with just npm install
• This uses jest snapshots for tests. The entire Flow test suite is included here and you can make changes and run jest -u and then git diff to see the styles that changed. Always update the snapshots if opening a PR.
• If you can, look at commands.md and check out Wadler's paper to understand how this works. I will try to write a better explanation soon.
• I haven't set up any automated tests yet, but for now as long as you run jest -u to update the snapshots and I see them in the PR, that's fine.
• You can run AST_COMPARE=1 jest for a more robust test run. That formats each file, re-parses it, and compares the new AST with the original one and makes sure they are semantically equivalent.