Indent Laravel Package

Getting Started

Start by installing via Composer: composer require cebe/indent. The library is tiny — just one main class, cebe\indent\Indent. The first use case is aligning multi-line strings in CLI output or generated code. For example, to indent a help block by two spaces:

use cebe\indent\Indent;

$output = Indent::indent("Line 1\nLine 2\nLine 3", 2);
// Returns: "  Line 1\n  Line 2\n  Line 3"

For generated code blocks inside templates, you can also auto-detect and strip common leading whitespace:

$code = Indent::dedent("    echo 'foo';\n    return true;");
// Returns: "echo 'foo';\nreturn true;"

Check the README or source (src/) for minimal, well-documented code — it’s just a few hundred lines.

Implementation Patterns

• CLI Formatting: Use indent() to nicely align help or usage messages in console commands. Combine with str_repeat(' ', $depth) for dynamic nesting levels.

• Code Generation: In scaffolders or code builders, dedent() lets you write clean multi-line strings in templates without worrying about indentation in source code. Wrap your template strings in dedent() before appending to output.

• Nested Structures: For hierarchical output (e.g., generating JSON/YAML-like structures), chain operations:

  $block = Indent::indent(
      Indent::dedent("key:\n  value1\n  value2"), 
      4
  );
  // "    key:\n      value1\n      value2"
  

• Configurable Indentation: Use indent() with a second argument of ' ' or "\t" instead of an integer to use custom prefixes (e.g., for editor-config consistency).

• Integrating with Livewire/Blade: When outputting multi-line text from Blade ({{ Indent::indent(...) }}), ensure you’re not double-escaping newlines — use implode("\n", $lines) when building arrays.

Gotchas and Tips

• No PSR compliance: This package has noPSR-12/PSR-2 alignment features — it’s purely about whitespace manipulation, not code style.
• Line ending handling: Works with \n, \r\n, etc., but does not normalize endings — preserve consistency in your input strings.
• Trailing newline matters: dedent() removes common leading whitespace per line, so a trailing newline that’s indented separately (e.g., " foo\n \nbar") can behave unexpectedly — trim inputs or use trim() if needed.
• No whitespace-only lines: dedent() treats lines consisting of only whitespace as contributing to the minimum indentation — they’ll be reduced to nothing. For logs where blank lines must remain, sanitize before dedent().
• Extensibility: Since it’s just static methods on a single class, subclassing isn’t supported — but you can easily wrap it in your own Indenter service for DI or project-specific defaults (e.g., always indent by 4 spaces).
• Stale but stable: Last release in 2019; extremely low risk (no active maintenance needed), but assume bug fixes won’t happen — good for embedding locally if you need more control.