Re: Autoformatting

Hi

On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 5:19 PM, Shirley Wang <swang(at)pivotal(dot)io> wrote:

> 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
>

Per our discussion yesterday, I think this is my biggest concern. Other
examples of options when blocks of text are highlighted are block
indent/outdent (we already have indent), and block commenting.

> - 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!
>

I have a couple more:

- I think the popup control panel should be in a different colour to the
highlight color. Maybe the light blue we use on the bootstrap panels.

- Please ensure the formatting code is a implemented in a way that allows
easy re-use. I'd like to be able to use it on the SQL and mSQL panels for
example, to ensure consistent formatting for display which can be very hard
to achieve in the templates alone.

- I would suggest starting a mailing list thread with a rough draft of the
intended formatting rules. We can refine them together, and include them in
the docs as well as implemented in the code.

Thanks!

>
> *1. Query pasted into text editor*
> [image: 16- unformatted query.png]
>
> *2. Query highlighted and autoformat option appears*
> [image: 17- query highlighted.png]
>
> *3. Query formatted*
> [image: 18- formatted query.png]
>
> On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 9:40 AM Raffi Holzer <rholzer(at)pivotal(dot)io> wrote:
>
>> 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 <dpage(at)pgadmin(dot)org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 3:02 PM, Raffi Holzer <rholzer(at)pivotal(dot)io> wrote:
>> > 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.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> --
>> Dave Page
>> Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
>> Twitter: @pgsnake
>>
>> EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
>> The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Raffi Holzer
>> Product Manager
>> Pivotal Labs
>>
>

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

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