Indentation practice

[sriram139]

There are multiple ways one can indent their code, two of them that are commonly used styles are as below:

1) Start the block on same line with open brace following the last character of that block header:

if(...){
<block code>
}

2) Start the block in new line with open brace in the next line:

if(...)
{
<block code>
}

Both these approaches have their own pros and cons.
However, I want to know which does Sencha team prefers the application developers to follow and reason behind using particular style of indentation. Specifically, I want to know if there are any disadvantages in following the second style of indentation as I feel it helps in improving the readability of code than the former.

Thanks,
Sriram

[mitchellsimoens]

This is really a matter of developer style. I personally keep it in one line:

if (...) {
    ....
}

And most do that as well. I do see a difference in the else so I see this:

if (...) {
    ...
} else if (...) {
    ...
} else {
    ...
}

but also see:

if (...) {
    ...
}
else if (...) {
    ...
}
else {
    ...
}

The 2nd bit I can see useful if you need to add some comments but it just looks weird to me but that's just my code style.

[Dipish]

Actually, it's a little more than just a matter of style.

The "same line braces" way is preferred in JavaScript in order to avoid some quirks with Automatic Semicolon Insertion (ASI).

The classic example is the following:

function foo() {
    return
    {
        bar: "foobar"
    };
}

in most js implementations will be equivalent to

function foo() {
    return;
    {
        bar: "foobar"
    };
}

and of course will return undefined. Of course not all situations involving curly braces are dangerous like this but for the sake of consistency, always put a brace on the same line. As an added bonus, "same-line braces" is a little more compact

More reading:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3218756/javascript-braces-on-new-line-or-not
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3960518/javascript-formatting-must-braces-be-on-the-same-line-as-the-if-function-etc-ke