Rules-Beautify - VSCode Extension for Netcool probe rules

The rules-beautify is a language extension & formatter for IBM Netcool rules language.

Features

• Syntax highlighting for .rules and .include extensions.

• An opinionated code formatting.

  • Adds a header comment if the first line of file is not a comment.

  • Single whitespace between control function and its parameters.

    if($a>$b) will be if ($a>$b)

  • Arguments passed to functions with multiple parameters (regmatch,match,contains,nmatch) are separated by a comma and a space character.

    if (regmatch($Node,$Node)) will be if (regmatch($Node, $Node))

  • Split all parenthesis to newline.

  • Single white space between variable assignment operator.

    @Node=$Node or $Node =@Node will be @Node = $Node

  • Format blocks & nested blocks (if,switch,foreach) using tab or whitespace indentation.

  • Log errors if any double quotes or parenthesis is not closed.

• Snippets

  • ### adds a comment block with placeholders for comment.
  • log adds a debug log with placeholders for log level.
  • extract adds a regmatch and extract block for regular expression based extracts. Placeholders for all variables.

Extension Settings

The extension offers below configuration for users to customise the formatting.

Settings ID	Default Value	Description
probeRules.indentWithWhiteSpace	true	Use whitespace as indent string
probeRules.numberOfWhiteSpaces	4	Number of whitespace for indentation
probeRules.splitBracesToNewLine	true	Split curly braces to newline
probeRules.backupBeforeFormatting	true	Take backup of file with extension -rules-beautify-backup.rules before formatting

Known Issues

• The formatter is a stupid formatter which uses regex replace for formatting. I am hoping someone will build or re-use a real AST parser and a proper formatter for rules language in future :).

• Formatter won't work if there is a lookup table definition (inline/multiline) present on the rules. The indentation will be unpredictable. Only works if lookup as an include file.

• This is a hobby project and there is no guarantee to work. If you are seeing any issues, please raise a github issue.

Acknowledgement

• Inspired from ibm_rules_extension

Footnote

IBM Tivoli Netcool is a Trademark owned by International Business Machines Corporation (“IBM”)

This extension has no relation to IBM company/products/services and is just meant to assist developers for rules file development using VSCode.

Enjoy coding :)