About

Legacy codebases and minified production assets often present a significant readability challenge. Developers frequently encounter single-line source files where logic flow is obscured by the absence of whitespace. This tool restores structural integrity to raw string data by applying language-specific indentation rules and lexical analysis.

Accuracy in code formatting is not merely cosmetic. It is essential for version control diffing, debugging logic errors, and maintaining architectural standards. A missing bracket or a misaligned block in languages like Python or YAML (though this tool focuses on web standards) can alter execution flow. This utility processes strings locally within the browser, ensuring that sensitive logic or proprietary algorithms are never transmitted to a server. It handles the structural tokenization of n nested levels, transforming messy input into a strictly indented output stream.

Formulas

The indentation logic can be modeled as a function of token depth. For any given line L_i, the indentation level d_i is calculated based on the cumulative state of open and closed delimiters in previous lines:

d_i = i−1∑k=0 (O_k − C_k)

Where O represents the count of opening tokens (e.g., {, [, <) and C represents closing tokens. The total visual whitespace W is then the product of depth and the user-defined constants for tab width w:

W_i = d_i × w

Reference Data

Language	Block Delimiter	Standard Indentation	MIME Type
HTML5	Tags < >	2 Spaces	text/html
CSS3	Braces { ...	4 Spaces or 1 Tab	text/css
JavaScript	Braces/Function Scope	2 or 4 Spaces	application/javascript
JSON	Object/Array []	2 Spaces	application/json
XML	Tags < >	2 Spaces	application/xml
Minified	None (Newlines removed)	0 Spaces	n/a
Strict Mode	Pragma Directive	Varies	n/a
JSX (React)	Component Tags	2 Spaces	text/jsx

Frequently Asked Questions

No. The tool uses lexical analysis (tokenizing) to read the string structure without executing it. This prevents potential security risks associated with running untrusted JavaScript or HTML. It strictly manipulates string data based on syntax rules.

JSON is stricter than JavaScript objects. Keys must be wrapped in double quotes, and trailing commas are forbidden. If the input is not valid JSON (e.g., it contains single quotes or comments), the native parser will throw an error. This tool attempts to validate before formatting.

The current version prioritizes the primary selected language. For mixed files (like an HTML file with script and style tags), the HTML formatter will indent the tags correctly, but the inner content of scripts or styles may treat newlines purely as text content depending on the complexity of the nesting.

The tool defaults to standard practices (2 or 4 spaces) per session. To ensure consistent formatting across a team, it is recommended to use a server-side linter or a `.editorconfig` file in your repository, using this tool primarily for quick debugging or unminifying snippets.