Managing ColdFusion code formatting

Hi all!

Since I use eclipse as ColdFusion editor, I have installed cfeclipse plug-in for ColdFusion.

I got two issues which makes me writing this blog post. One is slowing down editing of large file in cfeclipse and proper code formatting which improves readability.

Since cfelipse is now providing more features, eclipse is now taking more time and gives a slow response in typing. My project has some files with more that 1200 lines to 10k lines! So eclipse becomes time-consuming if we try to edit those files.

cfmodule and cfinclude are two options that can be used to reduce the file size by splitting main file by your functionality. But if you are still stick and you don’t want to use them, then you can use notepad++ for those files.

Most of the ColdFusion guys aware of Notepad++’s plugin for ColdFusion. It is simply great! But Notepadd++ and its plug-ins are not yet compared with eclipse with efclipse.

I reviewed my files and those files are also having leading spaces in code indentation. I think tab is the best way to have white spaces for code indentation, because if you can move cursor with your keyboard’s arrow keys faster than if we have spaces. It can also reduce number of characters of your file.

Recently cfeclipse’s update provides color formatting for variable scopes and color formatting within cfscript tag.
They are now also providing css, JavaScript and SQL code formatting as well as. But the main issue is we do not need newline for each ColdFusion tag. For example:

<input type="checkbox" name="mycheckbox" <cfif form.mycheckbox EQ 1>checked</cfif>/>

So auto code formatting with Ctrl+Shift+F will not give you nice and intelligent output.

So I decided to remove leading spaces with tab characters, without using auto code formatter.

To see the tab and space characters, just enable the “Show symbols” option.

What my logic is to find all leading spaces and replace 4 spaces with one tab character.

Run this code with providing your large file which has mix of spaces and tab in code indentation and see the output!

<cfif FileExists("#ExpandPath('/codeformatter_out.cfm')#")>
	<cffile action="delete" file="#ExpandPath('/codeformatter_out.cfm')#"/>
</cfif>
<cfloop file= "#ExpandPath('/codeformatter_source.cfm')#" index="theLine">
	<cfset ret = ReFind("^[ \t]+",theLine, 1, true) > <!--- RegEx to file leading spaces (tab+spaces) --->
	<cfif ret.len[1] GT 0>
		<!--- Find space count --->
		<cfset totalspace = len(rereplace(left(theLine,ret.len[1]),'[^ ]+',"","all"))>
		<!--- Find tab count --->
		<cfset totaltab = len(rereplace(left(theLine,ret.len[1]),'[^\t]+',"","all"))>
		<!--- 4 space should be converted to 1 tab --->
		<cfset totalnewtab = ceiling(totalspace / 4)>
		<!--- Calculate total tab to set --->
		<cfset finaltab = totaltab + totalnewtab>
		<!--- Create tab string to replace --->
		<cfset tabStr = "">
		<cfloop from="1" to="#finaltab#" index="i">
			<cfset tabStr = tabStr & "	">
		</cfloop>
		<!--- Replace leading spaces with our tab string --->
		<cfset theLine = ReReplace(theLine,"^[ \t]+",tabStr)>
		<!--- Remove trailing spaces --->
		<cfset theLine = ReReplace(theLine,"[ \t]+$",'')>
	</cfif>
     <cffile action="append" file="#ExpandPath('/codeformatter_out.cfm')#" output="#theLine#"/>
</cfloop>