Prettier Apex [Not Opinionated]

This is a code formatter for the Apex Programming Language, used on the Salesforce development platform.

It uses the excellent Prettier engine for formatting, and the jorje compiler from Salesforce for parsing.

:warning: NOTE: The original project follows the Prettier Option Philosophy. This fork DOES NOT follow this strategy and contains several additional configuration options that can be listed below in the table or in the changelog.

⚡️ Quick start

You can automatically format Apex code in our playground without having to install anything.

The playground above does not work with additional options from this repository

To integrate Prettier Apex in your workflow, please follow the Usage section.

✨ Status

The purpose of this fork is to improve the original package. Although, the Prettier developers don't want to add additional options saying that this is very opinionated formatter, from my personal experience every company may have their own Apex coding style guidelines and some of these companies will not change their mind and prefer the style that is proposed in the original Apex prettier plugin. For exactly this case this fork has been created. Another reason is that I like an opportunity to configure how my code looks!

Check out the new formatting options and changes in the changelog or take a look at the examples!

📖 Usage

Requirements

• Node >= 18.11.0
• Java Runtime Engine >= 11

How to use

First, install the library:

1# Install locally
2npm install --save-dev prettier @ilyamatsuev/prettier-plugin-apex
3
4# Or install globally
5npm install --global prettier @ilyamatsuev/prettier-plugin-apex

If you install globally, run:

1prettier --plugin=@ilyamatsuev/prettier-plugin-apex --write "/path/to/project/**/*.{trigger,cls}"

If you install locally, you can add prettier as a script in package.json:

1{
2  "scripts": {
3    "prettier": "prettier"
4  }
5}

Then in order to run it:

1npm run prettier -- --plugin=@ilyamatsuev/prettier-plugin-apex --write "/path/to/project/**/*.{trigger,cls}"

Tip

Initial run

If you are formatting a big code base for the first time, please make sure that you have some form of version control in place, so that you can revert any change if necessary. You should also run Prettier with the --debug-check argument. For example:

1prettier --plugin=@ilyamatsuev/prettier-plugin-apex --debug-check "/path/to/project/**/*.{trigger,cls}"

This will guarantee that the behavior of your code will not change because of the format.

If there are no errors, you can run prettier with --write next. If there are errors, please file a bug report so that they can be fixed.

Anonymous Apex

You can also format anonymous Apex with this program by using the apex-anonymous parser.

For example:

1prettier --write "/path/to/project/anonymous/**/*.cls" --plugin=@ilyamatsuev/prettier-plugin-apex --parser apex-anonymous

Note that Prettier will treat any Apex file that it finds using the glob above as anonymous code blocks, so it is recommended that you collect all of your anonymous Apex files into one directory and limit the use of --apex-anonymous only in that directory.

Ignoring lines

If there are lines in your Apex code that you do not want formatted by Prettier (either because you don't agree with the formatting choice, or there is a bug), you can instruct Prettier to ignore it by including the comment // prettier-ignore or /* prettier-ignore */ on the line before. For example:

// prettier-ignore
matrix(
  1, 0, 0,
  0, 1, 0,
  0, 0, 1
)

Configuration

This library follows the same configuration format as Prettier, which is documented here.

Check out the examples of how to use the new options here.

This is Not Opinionated formatter, so the there are multiple configurations available. The list can extend in future:

Name	Default	Description
printWidth	80	Same as in Prettier (see prettier docs)
tabWidth	2	Same as in Prettier (see prettier docs)
useTabs	false	Same as in Prettier (see prettier docs)
requirePragma	false	Same as in Prettier (see prettier docs)
insertPragma	false	Same as in Prettier (see prettier docs)
apexStandaloneParser	none	If set to built-in, Prettier uses the built in standalone parser for better performance. See Performance Tip. If set to none, Prettier invokes the CLI parser for every file.
apexStandalonePort	2117	The port that the standalone Apex parser listens on. Only applicable if apexStandaloneParser is built-in.
apexStandaloneHost	localhost	The host that the standalone Apex parser listens on. Only applicable if apexStandaloneParser is built-in.
apexStandaloneProtocol	http	The protocol that the standalone Apex parser uses. Only applicable if apexStandaloneParser is built-in.
apexInsertFinalNewline	true	Whether a newline is added as the last thing in the output
apexFormatAnnotations	false	Format Apex annotations to the upper camel case; format annotation arguments to lower camel case; add spaces between annotation arguments; convert testmethod modifier to @IsTest annotation.
apexFormatStandardTypes	false	Format the most popular Apex standard types for definitions (does not work for chained method calls). For example: System, Map, DateTime, SObject etc.
apexFormatInlineComments	none	If set to spaced, adds a whitespace after the "//" in the inline comment. If set to trimed, works as spaced but also removes all whitespaces before and after the comment. If set to strict, works as trimed but also makes the first comment letter uppercase. If set to none, does not change inline comments formatting.
apexEmptyBlockBracketLine	false	Keep the open and closing brackets on the same line for the empty blocks.
apexExpandOneLineProperties	true	Expand properties even if there is only one statement in getter or setter. If the option is false the properties will be inline if there is only one statement or if the printWidth option is not exceeded.
apexExplicitAccessModifier	false	Explicitly put the private keyword to class members if the access modifier was not provided.
apexSortModifiers	false	Sort class member modifiers in the certain order. For fields: <access> static final transient, for methods: <access> static/override virtual/abstract.
apexForceCurly	false	Force curly brackets around if/else/for/while statements.

📝 Editor integration

VScode

Follow this tutorial from Salesforce in order to use this plugin in VSCode.

🚀 Performance Tips/3rd party integration

By default, this library invokes a CLI application to get the AST of the Apex code. However, since this CLI application is written in Java, there is a heavy start up cost associated with it. In order to alleviate this issue, we also have an optional HTTP server that makes sure the start up is invoked exactly once. This is especially useful if this library is integrated in a 3rd party application.

In order to use this server, you have to evoke it out of band before running Prettier, as well as specifying a special flag when running Prettier:

1# Start the server (if installed globally)
2start-apex-server
3# Or if installed locally
4node /path/to/library/dist/bin/start-apex-server.js
5
6# In a separate console
7prettier --apex-standalone-parser built-in --write "/path/to/project/**/*.{trigger,cls}"
8
9# After you are done, stop the server (if installed globally)
10stop-apex-server
11# Or if installed locally
12node /path/to/library/dist/bin/stop-apex-server.js

By default, the server listens on http://localhost:2117. This can be customized by specifying the --host and --port arguments:

1start-apex-server --host 127.0.0.1 --port 2118

🚢 Continuous Integration

Prettier Apex can be used to automatically check correct formatting for Apex code in the context of CI/CD, for example:

1# Start the language server for improved parsing performance,
2# and put it in the background (*nix only) so that next commands can be run.
3nohup start-apex-server >/dev/null 2>&1 &
4# Wait until the server is up before sending requests
5npx wait-on http://localhost:2117/api/ast/
6# Check that Apex files are formatted according to Prettier Apex style
7prettier --plugin=@ilyamatsuev/prettier-plugin-apex --check 'project/**/*.{trigger,cls}' --apex-standalone-parser built-in
8# Clean up the language server
9stop-apex-server