Tedent

Keep your multi-line templated strings lookin' good :sunglasses:

Table of Contents

• What is it?
• What does the name stand for?
• Why create it?
• Simple Usage
• How the indentation works
• Important Usage Notes
  • edge-cases and input requirements
• Test

What is it?

• A function similar to dedent just with different semantics

What does the name stand for?

• Template string
• indentation

names are hard

Why create it?

• dedent didn't handle the following case like I wanted

//
// any multi-line indented string will do, but stringifying an object is the
//   common case for me
//
const boroughs = ['Brooklyn', 'Manhattan'],
  boroughsString = JSON.stringify(boroughs, null, 2)

console.log(
  dedent(`
    New York boroughs
    ${boroughs}
  `)
)

/*
expected:
New York boroughs
[
  "Brooklyn",
  "Manhattan"
]

actual:
New York boroughs
  [
"Brooklyn",
"Manhattan"
]
*/

Simple Usage

import tedent from 'tedent'

console.log(
  tedent(`
    This will be indented
      as you expect
  `)
)

// writes:
// This will be indented
//   as you expect

How the indentation works

The indentation logic is fairly convoluted in order to make the following work

const jstring = anObject => JSON.stringify(anObject, null, 2)

console.log(
  tedent(`
    header

      object 1: ${jstring(object1)}

      object 2: ${jstring(object2)}
  `)
)

//---------
// outputs
//---------
// header
//
//   object 1: {
//     ...properly indented object1 contents...
//   }
//
//   object 2: {
//     ...properly indented object2 contents...
//   }
//

Because the indentation logic is both young and convoluted, please refer to the code and tests for details. The library is not that big and if you have any questions please create a github issue.

Important Usage Notes

• First of all, this library doesn't handle tabs. I will accept a PR with support

• Secondly, if you always use tedent like the following

  tedent(`
    at least one line
  `)

  then you shouldn't run into any issues. However we all know input can be tricky so tedent has a few edge-cases built-in as well as input requirements

edge-cases and input requirements

• if the first argument is anything but undefined or typeof 'string' then an error will be thrown
• if you pass undefined an empty string is returned
• if you pass a string with three or more lines, then
  • the first and last lines must contain only whitespace
  • the second line must contain a non-whitespace character
  • an error will be thrown if the above two conditions are not met
• if you pass a string with fewer than 3 lines
  • if they only contain whitespace then an empty string is returned
  • otherwise an error is thrown
• finally, all trailing whitespace from the result is trimmed

I didn't feel it necessary to explain the reasons for my choices in handling edge-cases, but if you have questions please ask via github issues.

Test

./run test