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.

⚠️ 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:

# Install locally
npm install --save-dev prettier @ilyamatsuev/prettier-plugin-apex

# Or install globally
npm install --global prettier @ilyamatsuev/prettier-plugin-apex

If you install globally, run:

prettier --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:

{
  "scripts": {
    "prettier": "prettier"
  }
}

Then in order to run it:

npm 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:

prettier --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:

prettier --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:

📝 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:

# Start the server (if installed globally)
start-apex-server
# Or if installed locally
node /path/to/library/dist/bin/start-apex-server.js

# In a separate console
prettier --apex-standalone-parser built-in --write "/path/to/project/**/*.{trigger,cls}"

# After you are done, stop the server (if installed globally)
stop-apex-server
# Or if installed locally
node /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:

start-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:

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