How to turn off the Eclipse code formatter for certain sections of Java code

Question

I ve got some Java code with SQL statements written as Java strings  please no OR M flamewars  the embedded SQL is what it is - not my decision    I ve broken the SQL statements semantically into several concatenated strings over several lines of code for ease of maintenance  So instead of something like   String query    SELECT FOO  BAR  BAZ FROM ABC WHERE BAR  gt  4     I have something like   String query        SELECT FOO  BAR  BAZ           FROM ABC                    WHERE BAR  gt  4           This style makes the SQL much easier to read and maintain  IMHO   especially for larger queries  For example  I can put my editor into  overwrite  mode and modify the text in-place fairly easily   Note that this issue generalizes beyond the particular example of SQL  Any code that is written with any vertical formatting  particularly tabular constructs  is susceptible to destruction by a pretty printer   Now  some project members use the Eclipse editor and the semantic formatting is often destroyed when they format an entire source file   Is there a way to instruct Eclipse to ignore certain lines of source with respect to formatting   I m looking for something like a special comment that toggles the Eclipse formatter  Ideally  such a comment could be configurable to be whatever we choose  and other formatters could be programmed to respect it as well      STOP-ECLIPSE-FORMATTING String query        SELECT FOO  BAR  BAZ           FROM ABC                    WHERE BAR  gt  4            START-ECLIPSE-FORMATTING   Obviously  one  solution  is to have our team members standardize on some external formatter like Jalopy or JIndent  but that s not what this question is about  also  not my decision on this project   I m specifically looking for a way to avoid the Eclipse formatter on an ad-hoc basis   Ideally  a solution will allow me to insert instructions for the Eclipse formatter without requiring team members using Eclipse to do any IDE reconfiguration  other than possibly choosing a formatter agnostic command comment  STOP-ECLIPSE-FORMATTING  rarr  STOP-FORMATTING

User · Answer

Not so pretty but works with default settings and for the first line as well  String query    quot  quot         quot SELECT FOO  BAR  BAZ quot         quot   FROM ABC           quot         quot  WHERE BAR  gt  4       quot

User · Answer

Instead of turning the formatting off  you can configure it not to join already wrapped lines  Similar to Jitter s response  here s for Eclipse STS    Properties     Java Code Style   Formatter   Enable project specific settings OR Configure Workspace Settings   Edit   Line Wrapping  tab    check  Never join already wrapped lines    Save  apply

User · Answer

This hack works   String x    s      Formatter Hack      a            c            d     I would suggest not to use the formatter  Bad code should look bad not artificially good  Good code takes time  You cannot cheat on quality  Formatting is part of source code quality

User · Answer

xpmatteo has the answer to disabling portions of code  but in addition to this  the default eclipse settings should be set to only format edited lines of code instead of the whole file     Preferences- gt Java- gt Editor- gt Save Actions- gt Format Source Code- gt Format Edited Lines   This would have prevented it from happening in the first place since your coworkers are reformatting code they didn t actually change   This is a good practice to prevent mishaps that render diff on your source control useless  when an entire file is reformatted because of minor format setting differences      It would also prevent the reformatting if the on off tags option was turned off

User · Answer

Alternative method  In Eclipse 3 6  under  Line Wrapping  then  General Settings  there is an option to  Never join already wrapped lines   This means the formatter will wrap long lines but not undo any wrapping you already have

User · Answer

End each of the lines with a double slash        That will keep eclipse from moving them all onto the same line

User · Answer

If you put the plus sign on the beginning of the line  it formats differently   String query         SELECT FOO  BAR  BAZ               FROM ABC                        WHERE BAR  gt  4

User · Answer

Eclipse 3 6 allows you to turn off formatting by placing a special comment  like      formatter off         formatter on   The on off features have to be turned  on  in Eclipse preferences  Java    Code Style   Formatter  Click on Edit  Off On Tags  enable Enable Off On tags   It s also possible to change the magic strings in the preferences     check out the Eclipse 3 6 docs here   More Information  Java      Code Style     Formatter     Edit     Off On Tags  This preference allows you to define one tag to disable and one tag to enable the formatter  see the Off On Tags tab in your formatter profile      You also need to enable the flags from Java Formatting

User · Answer

I m using fixed width string-parts  padded with whitespace  to avoid having the formatter mess up my SQL string indentation  This gives you mixed results  and won t work where whitespace is not ignored as it is in SQL  but can be helpful       final String sql    SELECT v value FROM properties p                                JOIN property values v ON p property id   v property id                  WHERE p product id                                                       AND v value        IS NOT NULL

User · Answer

The phantom comments  adding    where you want new lines  are great    The  formatter  off adds a reference from the code to the editor  The code should  in my opinion  never have such references  The phantom comments      will work regardless of the formatting tool used  Regardless of Eclipse or InteliJ or whatever editor you use  This even works with the very nice Google Java Format The phantom comments      will work all over your application  If you also have Javascript and perhaps use something like JSBeautifier  You can have similar code style also in the Javascript  Actually  you probably DO want formatting right  You want to remove mixed tab space and trailing spaces  You want to indent the lines according to the code standard  What you DONT want is a long line  That  and only that  is what the phantom comment gives you

User · Answer

AFAIK from Eclipse 3 5 M4 on the formatter has an option  Never Join Lines  which preserves user lines breaks  Maybe that does what you want   Else there is this ugly hack  String query           SELECT FOO  BAR  BAZ              FROM ABC                       WHERE BAR  gt  4

User · Answer

You have to turn on the ability to add the formatter tags  In the menubar go to    Windows        rarr         Preferences   Java           rarr         Code Style     rarr         Formatter     Press the Edit button  Choose the last tab  Notice the On Off box and enable them with a checkbox

User · Answer

See this answer on SO   There is another solution that you can use to suppress the formatting of specific block comments  Use   -  note the hyphen  at the beginning of the block comment  and the formatting won t be affected if you format the rest of the file     -    Here is a block comment with some very special    formatting that I want indent 1  to ignore           one           two               three       Source  Documentation at Oracle

[java] How to turn off the Eclipse code formatter for certain sections of Java code?

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