Require Or Disallow Space Before Blocks (space-before-blocks)

Consistency is an important part of any style guide. While it is a personal preference where to put the opening brace of blocks, it should be consistent across a whole project. Having an inconsistent style distracts the reader from seeing the important parts of the code.

Fixable: This rule is automatically fixable using the --fix flag on the command line.

Rule Details

This rule will enforce consistency of spacing before blocks. It is only applied on blocks that don’t begin on a new line.

This rule ignores spacing which is between => and a block. The spacing is handled by the arrow-spacing rule.

This rule takes one argument. If it is "always" then blocks must always have at least one preceding space. If "never" then all blocks should never have any preceding space. If different spacing is desired for function blocks and keyword blocks, an optional configuration object can be passed as the rule argument to configure the cases separately.

( e.g. { "functions": "never", "keywords": "always" } )

The default is "always".

"always"

The following patterns are considered problems:

/*eslint space-before-blocks: 2*/

if (a){           /*error Missing space before opening brace.*/
    b();
}

if (a) {
    b();
} else{           /*error Missing space before opening brace.*/
    c();
}

function a(){}    /*error Missing space before opening brace.*/

for (;;){         /*error Missing space before opening brace.*/
    b();
}

try {} catch(a){} /*error Missing space before opening brace.*/

The following patterns are not considered problems:

/*eslint space-before-blocks: 2*/

if (a) {
    b();
}

function a() {}

for (;;) {
    b();
}

try {} catch(a) {}

"never"

The following patterns are considered problems:

/*eslint space-before-blocks: [2, "never"]*/

if (a) {           /*error Unexpected space before opening brace.*/
    b();
}

function a() {}    /*error Unexpected space before opening brace.*/

for (;;) {         /*error Unexpected space before opening brace.*/
    b();
}

try {} catch(a) {} /*error Unexpected space before opening brace.*/

The following patterns are not considered problems:

/*eslint space-before-blocks: [2, "never"]*/

if (a){
    b();
}

function a(){}

for (;;){
    b();
}

try{} catch(a){}

The following patterns are considered problems when configured { "functions": "never", "keywords": "always" }:

/*eslint space-before-blocks: [2, { "functions": "never", "keywords": "always" }]*/
/*eslint-env es6*/

function a() {}    /*error Unexpected space before opening brace.*/

try {} catch(a){}  /*error Missing space before opening brace.*/

class Foo{         /*error Missing space before opening brace.*/
  constructor() {} /*error Unexpected space before opening brace.*/
}

The following patterns are not considered problems when configured { "functions": "never", "keywords": "always" }:

/*eslint space-before-blocks: [2, { "functions": "never", "keywords": "always" }]*/
/*eslint-env es6*/

for (;;) {
  // ...
}

describe(function(){
  // ...
});

class Foo {
  constructor(){}
}

The following patterns are considered problems when configured { "functions": "always", "keywords": "never" }:

/*eslint space-before-blocks: [2, { "functions": "always", "keywords": "never" }]*/
/*eslint-env es6*/

function a(){}      /*error Missing space before opening brace.*/

try {} catch(a) {}  /*error Unexpected space before opening brace.*/

class Foo {         /*error Unexpected space before opening brace.*/
  constructor(){}   /*error Missing space before opening brace.*/
}

The following patterns are not considered problems when configured { "functions": "always", "keywords": "never" }:

/*eslint space-before-blocks: [2, { "functions": "always", "keywords": "never" }]*/
/*eslint-env es6*/

if (a){
  b();
}

var a = function() {}

class Foo{
  constructor() {}
}

When Not To Use It

You can turn this rule off if you are not concerned with the consistency of spacing before blocks or if you are using the space-after-keywords rule set to "never".

Version

This rule was introduced in ESLint 0.9.0.

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