Format the code

Ballerina has an opiniated style guide. See Coding conventions

Those coding conventions are followed by the Ballerina formatting tool.

Use one of the following ways to format the source files.

  • Use bal format command - Formats the Ballerina source files. Formatting can be performed on a Ballerina package, module, or source file.

  • Use VSCode plugin formatting. Can use the following options.

    • Right-click on the source file and use the Format Document option.
    • Use format on save feature.

Order of the imports in a .bal file

The sorting makes it simple to browse the list when there are many imports.

  • First import the modules from same package.
  • Second comes modules from the ballerina/ and ballerinax/ organizations.
  • Third import the modules from 3rd party organizations.
  • Seperate each group by an extra line. And each group has their imports in alphabetical order.
import bar;
import foo;

import ballerina/log;
import ballerina/time;
import ballerinax/jdbc;
import ballerinax/oracledb;

import abc/bar;
import abc/baz;
import cde/abz;

See Also: