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@yjbanov
Last active February 4, 2016 18:34
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trailing commas for tree-like code in Dart
// frameworks such as Flutter and UIX encourage users to express their
// UI using tree-like syntaxes.
// unfortunately dartfmt will format this code:
main() {
var componentTree = new MyButton(
title: 'Save',
onClick: () {
doSomthing();
},
icon: new Image(
src: '/images/save.png',
width: 10
)
);
}
// to this:
main() {
var componentTree = new MyButton(title: 'Save', onClick: () {
doSomthing();
}, icon: new Image(src: '/images/save.png', width: 10));
}
// what if Dart allowed trailing commas in function/method/constructor calls and
// dartfmt treated them as a signal that the closing paren must go on the next line?
main() {
var componentTree = new MyButton(
title: 'Save',
onClick: () {
doSomthing();
},
icon: new Image(
src: '/images/save.png',
width: 10, // <-- trailing comma
), // <-- trailing comma
);
}
// problem solved?
@sethladd
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  div(
    style: {
      'display': 'block',
      'width': '10px',
    },
    contents: [
      span(
        id: 'msg',
        contents: [
          text(this.message)
        ]
      ),
      button(
        contents: [
          text('Save')
        ]
      )
    ]
  );

@yjbanov
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yjbanov commented Jan 25, 2016

Could you eliminate extra list allocations and named parameters from the API and still make it look nice?

@Hixie
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Hixie commented Jan 25, 2016

The formatter should just never have assymetric whitespace around punctuation pairs. If there's a newline after the (, it should put a newline before the ), and so on. The alternative is much uglier in general, not just around this kind of tree structure.

@yjbanov
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yjbanov commented Feb 4, 2016

@Hixie, that's true, however, how would the formatter choose between putting a newline and not putting one after the opening paren? I'm proposing a simple syntactic rule:

Is there a trailing command in the function call/constructor call/annotation/list literal/map literal?
Yes: put newline after the opening paren and before the closing paren
No: no newlines (or whatever it does today)

@munificent: oh yeah, I forgot to mention annotations. Today we have:

@Component(
    selector: 'my-component',
    host: const {
      '(keypress)': 'handleKeyPress()',
      'tabindex': '0',
    },  // awesome
    directives: const [
      NgIf,
      NgFor,
    ],  // awesome!!!
    styleUrls: const ['some.css'])  // :(

While with this proposal we could have:

@Component(
  selector: 'my-component',
  host: const {
    '(keypress)': 'handleKeyPress()',
    'tabindex': '0',
  },  // awesome
  directives: const [
    NgIf,
    NgFor,
  ],  // awesome!!!
  styleUrls: const ['some.css'],
)  // woohoo!!!

@Hixie
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Hixie commented Feb 4, 2016

It would just do whatever the author did. If the author includes a newline, include a newline and match it before the closing punctuation, otherwise, try to fit it on one line and break if necessary (and if there's a good breaking point -- but after an open punctuation is not a good breaking point).

@Hixie
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Hixie commented Feb 4, 2016

(I understand that what I'm proposing is incompatible with dartfmt's current goals. I think dartfmt's goals should change.)

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