Code formatting is the reason for many a jihad between developers all over, and spending any time at all discussing it is a waste of time. (So should I stop writing here? No! There is an answer! Press on…) Unfortunately this is one issue where it’s impossible to make everyone happy, so you have to settle for making everyone equally UNhappy.
A really painless way to do make everyone equally unhappy is to automate the formatting, and that’s where the amazing little gadget, the Flex Formatter plugin for Flex and Flash Builder comes in.
The plugin adds a few buttons to the toolbar area of Flex Builder. These buttons are:
- Generate ASDoc Comments – For your whole file! In one click!
- Generate ASDoc Comment – For one item (also in one click!)
- Format Flex Code – Formats your entire MXML file (or selected lines) ….with one click
- Indent Flex Code – Not sure why you’d use this and not just the previous button, it seems to do the same thing
- Rearrange AS Code – Same as Format Flex Code, but for your AS files
To install it, go to “Help, Software Updates, Find and Install” and install from the new remote site:
http://flexformatter.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/FlexFormatter/FlexPrettyPrintCommandUpdateSite/
Grant Skinner has a nice post on this, as well as a settings file that he has exported for use: http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/12/indispensable_p.html