Is there a C# auto formatter that I can use to define custom rules for formatting?

Question

My group has a source analysis tool that enforces certain styles that we have to comply with. I can't change it, and some of the rules are just a pain. One example is that all properties have to come before methods, and all constructors must come before properties. It seems silly to me that I have to take time to do something to the program when to the compiler it is the same. I would like some thing that is a plugin to VS that will let me do things like this automatically. Also, it would be nice to have it automatically put using's inside the namespace block.

Answer 1

You have different possibilities, depending on what exactly you want to do:

Resharper: There is a auto-format function which formats the source code of a single file or all files in the project / solution depending on your selected rules. So you set the settings for braces, naming, whitespaces, operators, lamdas, ... For more information see here. Resharper also supports settings a source- code file for all solutions or a shared settings file which is the same for all persons in the team.

FxCop: I havn't ever used this at work, but it's also a great tool an you can also select the rules which you want to enforce.

Answer 2

Unless they bake it into VS2010, Resharper has the auto formatting capabilities you're probably looking for. CodeSmith probably has it too, I just haven't used it...

Answer 3

There are some formatting options built into VS. Goto Tools-->Options-->Text Editor-->C#-->Formatting.

They don't include every scenario, but might get you close.

Answer 4

Resharper - what a fantastic tool. I don't think I could manage without it. It must be the ultimate productivity tool for Visual Studio. Re-factoring, code analysis, code formatting, code completion - it has the lot.