Lately, I have been working on bunch of Java Services that requires code refactoring and the first step to code refactoring is code formatting. The codebase has spotless configured but the formatting is not consistent while working in different IDEs. This is a Technical Debt that talks about Code Readability and Indentation. This needs to be addressed to fix the health of the codebase. The real affect of this inconsistent code format will be realised during PR reviews and while syncing others code into the current feature branches.

Come back here after reading my 2016 post(still relevant). Scroll down to Chapter 5: Formatting Section

I use VsCode and here is my brief setup that enables Autoformat.

  • Formatting is enforced via Spotless plugin through build tools like gradle/maven.
    • But, this is during BUILD time.

    • Here is my sample gradle spotless config

      spotless {
  java {
        googleJavaFormat()
        importOrderFile(rootProject.file('importsorder'))
        removeUnusedImports()
        trimTrailingWhitespace()
  }
}

    • importsorder

      # @author: sairaghavak
10=
9=<app specific>
8=lombok
7=io
6=com
5=org
4=org.springframework
3=jakarta
2=javax
1=java
0=#
  • How about formatting in IDE?
    • I am not using Spotless for this. Rather I am doing what spotless is doing internally

    • Here is my on save action in vscode

      "emeraldwalk.runonsave": {
    "commands": [
        {
        "match": "\\.java$",
        "cmd": "java -jar /home/srk/google-java-format-1.25.0-all-deps.jar \
        --skip-sorting-imports --replace ${file}"
        }
    ]
}

    • settings.json

      "java.saveActions.organizeImports": true,
"java.completion.importOrder": [
    "#",
    "java",
    "javax",
    "jakarta",
    "org.springframework",
    "org",
    "com",
    "io",
    "lombok",
    "app-sepecifc",
    ""
]
  • This will ensure that the formatting is done via IDE
    • Now

    • BUILD Tool formatting = IDE Formatting

    • .gradlew build or .gradlew spotlessApply = VScode On File Save

This is not enough, as most of the Java Devs use Intellij it’s important to ensure that the formatting done through Intellij IDEA is inline with the above Vscode and Build time formatting.

  • Defined an .editorconfig. Read for intellij specific options

    [*]
  indent_style=space
  ident_size=2
  indent_use_tab=false
  end_of_line=lf
  charset=utf-8
  trim_trailing_whitespace=true
  insert_final_newline=true
  max_line_length=100

  # idea specific language agnostic settings
  ij_continuation_indent_size=2

  [*java]
  ij_java_imports_layout=disabled
  • This still doesn’t guarantee the formatting as expected.
  • Here are my installed plugins, but File Watchers is want we want at this point
    • Install file watcher plugin
      • Install File Watcher Plugin
    • Create file watcher config
      • Create a File watcher config

        • For better performance, uncheck the 2 options from the above image

      • Next
        • Create a file watcher
    • Once enabled this should be binded to actions on save
      • intellij plugins

  • That’s it. Now, Intellij’s on save is just doing gradlew spotlessApply

  • In summary

    (Vscode Java Formatting) = (Intellij Java Formatting)
    This will ensure consistent code formatting across the 2 widely used IDEs in Java projects.