outdent

Removes leading indentation from ES6 template strings

 

ES6 template strings are great, but they preserve everything between the backticks, including leading spaces.
Sometimes I want to indent my template literals to make my code more readable without including all those spaces in the
string.

Outdent will remove those leading spaces, as well as the leading and trailing newlines.

``javascript
import outdent from 'outdent';
const markdown = outdent
# My Markdown File

Here is some indented code:

console.log("hello world!");
;
console.log(markdown);
fs.writeFileSync('output.md', markdown);
`

The contents of output.md do not have the leading indentation:

# My Markdown File

Here is some indented code:

console.log("hello world!");

As a Javascript string:

`javascript
var markdown = '# My Markdown File\n' +
'\n' +
'Here is some indented code:' +
'\n' +
' console.log("hello world!");';
`

You can pass options to outdent to control its behavior. They are explained in Options.

`javascript
const output = outdent({trimLeadingNewline: false, trimTrailingNewline: false})
Hello world!
;
assert(output === '\nHello world!\n');
`

You can explicitly specify the indentation level by passing outdent as the first interpolated value. Its position
sets the indentation level and it is removed from the output.

`javascript
const output = outdent
${outdent}
Yo
12345
Hello world
;
assert(output === ' Yo\n345\n Hello world');
`

Note: ${outdent} must be alone on its own line without anything before or after it. It cannot be preceded by any non-whitespace characters.
If these conditions are not met, outdent will follow normal indentation-detection behavior.

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#### trimLeadingNewline
Default: true

#### trimTrailingNewline
Default: true

Whether or not outdent should remove the leading and/or trailing newline from your template string. For example:

`javascript
var s = outdent({trimLeadingNewline: false})
Hello
;
assert(s === '\nHello');
s = outdent({trimTrailingNewline: false})
Hello

assert(s === 'Hello\n');
s = outdent({trimLeadingNewline: false, trimTrailingNewline: false})

;
assert(s === '\n\n');
`

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#### Start on a new line

Start the contents of your template string on a new line after the opening backtick. Otherwise, outdent
has no choice but to detect indentation from the second line, which does not work in all situations.

`javascript
// Bad
const output = outdent * item 1
* sub-item
;
// output === ' item 1\n sub-item'; Indentation of sub-item is lost

// Good
const output = outdent
* item 1
* sub-item
;
``

#### Spaces and tabs

Spaces and tabs are treated identically. outdent does not verify that you are using spaces or tabs consistently; they
are all treated as a single character for the purpose of removing indentation. Spaces, tabs, and smart tabs should
all work correctly provided you use them consistently.

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This module includes TypeScript type declarations so you will get code completion and error-checking without installing anything else.

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File an issue on Github: https://github.com/cspotcode/outdent/issues