Comments on: JavaScript Beautify

By: Scott Schiller

Scott Schiller — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 18:57:22 +0000

http://prettyprinter.de/ .. I think this one’s been around since 2003 or something? A personal favourite.

By: Vital

Vital — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:35:47 +0000

Hi everybody!
So, i translate it from php to javascript :)

http://my.opera.com/Vital/blog/2007/11/21/javascript-beautify-on-javascript-translated

By: Olle Lundberg

Olle Lundberg — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:41:07 +0000

There is a disclaimer though – since it uses the built in function in the browser:

For best results, use Opera, Safari or Konqueror on this page. It partially works in Firefox (nested functions are not tidied, meaning that most scripts you want to tidy still end up unreadable), and fails to reformat code in IE and iCab.

By: Olle Lundberg

Olle Lundberg — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:39:01 +0000

Hmm, problem is that won't work well for huge scripts. Last time i tried it with a huge one it crashed. There is another one that works good with large scripts and is faster. It uses to built in toString()-funtions in the browser and is like 4 lines long: >JSTidy The script, however, has to be valid.

By: Andy Kant

Andy Kant — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 23:51:24 +0000

I’m with Kae in preferring ternary clauses (and I think most other people would agree, especially in the case of a beautifier which is meant to increase readability). Expanding ternary clauses wouldn’t really be an option for these JavaScript beautifiers since ternary clauses tend to be embedded all over the place and there isn’t an equivalent to a code block such as:

SomeLib.someMethod(someVar ? 37 : (someOtherVar > 0 ? someOtherVar : -1));

without doing some pretty complex code analysis.

By: Kae Verens

Kae Verens — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:23:24 +0000

@Simon, I know some people prefer the longer if…else form, but personally, I like short ternary code. I think the point of this is not to change code – just make it more readable.

By: Simon Jia

Simon Jia — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 18:43:17 +0000

Awesome post. I just happen to be curious about a piece of google analytics code today and this helped quite a bit.
One minor thing i noticed though:
var a = b ? (c % d) : e[f];
Looks like it doesn’t translate this into a formal if and else clause. It’s very minor to ppl who don’t mind the shortened syntax.

By: Bernd Matzner

Bernd Matzner — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 18:08:58 +0000

I really like Aptana for its code formatter – which does a good job at formatting JS code – it doesn’t go as far as other Eclipse-based formatters for beautifying scripting language code in terms of customizable formatting rules, but it still works nicely to help coding well-structured JS source.

By: Andy Kant

Andy Kant — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:38:40 +0000

Nice post because I happen to have a use for this today. ;-)

Compared the output to the one that Kae Verens mentioned/wrote. The output is pretty similar other than that the new one does a better job at managing whitespace.

By: Kae Verens

Kae Verens — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 11:47:53 +0000

Interesting.

Here’s one I wrote a few months ago as a comparison. http://verens.com/archives/2007/02/23/javascript-beautifier/

Mine is actually written in JavaScript.