Has anyone got a good tool or plugin to correctly display and auto format PDF templates? I need matching tags, braces etc.

lol honestly i just suffer though it, or manually fix it myself if its really bothering me... apparently there's a vscode plugin for it. but i don't use vscode or this plugin so... i have no idea if its any good https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=AntonLilleby.xp-freemarker-formatter

I don't use vscode but I'll abandon my principles for a tool that actually works. The templates I'm looking at now are too long, complex, and messy to look at any longer. I can't do it by hand because it's too big but how do you get NS to keep the formatting you do by hand?

err i don't i just keep my version of that i fixed 😄

installed, can't see any difference 😄

lol idk how it works you might have to right click and actually TELL it to reformat

image.png

IntelliJ supports freemarker.

@ehcanadian I've tried standard and a plugin. I just can't get it to work with the PDF templates

I think it's built-in, but I could be wrong. Do your files have the .ftl file extension?

.gtl made some difference but the auto formatting is still wrong in places

I guess you could try asking your favorite AI to fix it

.ftl = a faster-than-light file?

jetbrains IntelliJ supports freemarker/templating. I've used it to mess around with formatting.

How does the realtime view work?

I've just used it for the layout/formatting of the template itself. It won't be able to display netsuite stuff.

Where can I see that view?

You're right I was wrong. It was a plugin I had not a native built in. It just supports the syntax stuff natively. My bad there.

Trying to do the formatting with AI is a pain. It removes random bits of code, adds comments that aren't true etc.

Try telling it not to remove code and only add missing matching elements/tags. Start with a small sample template and keep editing your prompt.

Yeah, I'm prompting the life out of this thing. It's scary how it can make massive mistakes without you noticing. Ive got functional consultants telling me they've started using AI instead of actual SS devs. I feel like we're going to see a wave of failed AI projects etc before this matures.

What are you trying to do exactly w/ the layout? I've typically just done layouts through tables and specified widths etc... It's always a pain but that has worked well for me

I have several templates that I need to modify. Just the usual. They are around 2000 lines each with heavily nested conditionals. I am removing as much of the bloat as possible and generally fixing them to meet the template requirements. The lack of formatting makes it impossible to maintain though.

That definitely sounds like a mess. No functions or macros i take it either in all of that?

Correct.

@Craig, I suggest use a javascript templating library like handlebars instead of NetSuite's Advanced PDF. I've been using it for a long time. You can generate a JSON object using SuiteQL, then have the HTML template. Combine the JSON and HTML template using handlebar.

That sounds fantasic and I will check it out. That will never get approved on this project though.