Subject: Autoformatting

From: Raffi Holzer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:35:10 -0500

Hi Hackers,
 We are looking into auto formatting SQL text in the SQL editor. However,
some users have expressed that this can be done in different ways. Are
there preferences in this community fo rhow autoformatting should be done?

-- 
Raffi Holzer
Product Manager
Pivotal Labs

---

From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2017 10:53:00 +0000

Hi

On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 9:35 PM, Raffi Holzer <[email-masked]> wrote:
> some users have expressed that this can be done in different ways. Are there
> preferences in this community fo rhow autoformatting should be done?

I think that really depends on the specific feature being discussed.
For example, auto-indentation is very handy, and whilst it (and most
formatting features) should be configurable, I suspect many people
will leave it turned on. On the other hand, something like
auto-upper-casing of keywords may be either automatic, or shortcut
initiated, e.g. hit Ctrl+U to upper-case the word under the cursor.

Perhaps you should start by listing the specific features? For
reference, here's what pgAdmin 3 had:

* The auto-indent feature will automatically indent text to the same
depth as the previous line when you press return.
* Block indent text by selecting two or more lines and pressing the Tab key.
* Block outdent text that has been indented using the current tab
settings using Shift+Tab.
* Comment out SQL by selecting some text and pressing the Control+K.
* Uncomment SQL by selecting some text starting with a comment and
pressing Control+Shift+K.
* Shift the selected text to upper case by pressing Control+U.
* Shift the selected text to lower case by pressing Control+Shift+U.

pgAdmin 4 currently has:

* Auto-indent (not currently possible to disable it)

I'd definitely like to see the rest (and anything else that seems
useful) added, and made configurable where appropriate. I suspect the
only ones that should be truly automatic are auto-indent and and
upper-casing of keywords.

-- 
Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

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---

From: Raffi Holzer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2017 10:02:42 -0500

Hi Dave,
 When we were talking about auto formatting we were actually referring to a
single button press doing all of these things to a large block of text. The
use case here would be if you receive a large illegible query and paste it
into the query editor it would either automatically auto-format or you
would press a button and it would auto-format. We are trying to determine a
few things. One, are there preferred formatting guidelines and two, how
should this autoformatting be implemented? On a button press? Upon pasting
in the text?

On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 5:53 AM, Dave Page <[email-masked]> wrote:

> there

-- 
Raffi Holzer
Product Manager
Pivotal Labs

---

From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2017 09:37:11 +0000

Hi

On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 3:02 PM, Raffi Holzer <[email-masked]> wrote:
> into the query editor it would either automatically auto-format or you would
> press a button and it would auto-format.

Oh, OK.

> We are trying to determine a few
> things. One, are there preferred formatting guidelines

Hmm, it seems I missed SQL when I wrote our (basic) coding standards:
https://www.pgadmin.org/docs4/1.x/coding_standards.html

By default (in my opinion), we should have 4 character indents, new
lines for logically distinct objects (e.g. columns or constraints on a
table), commas etc. at the end of the line, keywords in upper case,
e.g.

SELECT
    a,
    b,
FROM
    t
ORDER BY
    a,
    b;

However, that obviously becomes unwieldy in some cases, so common
sense is needed:

SELECT
    a, b,
FROM
    t
ORDER BY
    a, b;

There should of course be a limit on the number of columns listed per
line - but should the limit be a count or max width in chars? With a
CREATE TABLE statement I think it's clear that each column should be
on it's own line:

CREATE TABLE t (
    a serial NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
    b text
);

In other words, we need to define (or adopt) a formal standard for
this, and then write a parser/formatter - which seems like a decidedly
non-trivial amount of work (FYI, I tried the Python format-sql module,
and it failed on ~80% of my tests - probably either because it doesn't
understand COPY or pl/pgsql).

> and two, how should
> this autoformatting be implemented? On a button press? Upon pasting in the
> text?

Definitely not on pasting - if you drop in a large script, it could
take far too long, plus you may not care, or be looking at the
original source in another tool and trying to mentally reconcile lines
or statements to each other. I would say it should be a
button/shortcut.

---

From: Raffi Holzer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2017 09:39:44 -0500

Thanks Dave! We came to the same conclusion about a button press. And thank
you for the SQL guidelines.

On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 4:37 AM, Dave Page <[email-masked]> wrote:

> would

-- 
Raffi Holzer
Product Manager
Pivotal Labs

---

From: Shirley Wang <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2017 17:19:03 +0000

Hello!

Attached are current designs for SQL autoformatting. This feature is not
developed yet, only mockups of a potential solution so technical
implementation is still being discussed. Style guide for autoformatting
doesn't yet exist either, what's shown is manually formatted by another
person.

When a user highlights a section of text, a menu option appears below with
the option to autoformat text.

Not included in this current design:
- other options available when highlighting multiple sections of text
- compacting queries

We're currently testing this design with pgAdmin3 users. Looking to
validate with a few more before developing the feature. Let us know your
thoughts!

*1. Query pasted into text editor*

*2. Query highlighted and autoformat option appears*

*3. Query formatted*
On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 9:40 AM Raffi Holzer <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Thanks Dave! We came to the same conclusion about a button press. And
> thank you for the SQL guidelines.
>