Alphabetize your YAML files!

Yalphabetize is a static code analyser and code formatter for alphabetising key-value pairs in your project's YAML files. Yalphabetize not only alerts you to alphabetisation offences in your YAML files but can also automatically fix them for you.

Please note: yalphabetize is still a young project. Please ensure you review any changes yalphabetize has made to your YAML files before commiting them to your project.

Installing yalphabetize is easy:

$ gem install yalphabetize

To install with bundler add the following to your Gemfile (set the require option to false, as it is a standalone tool):

gem 'yalphabetize', require: false

Yalphabetize is inspired by the brilliant Rubocop gem. Yalphabetize's CLI will be familiar to anybody already familiar with Rubocop.

Running yalphabetize on your project is a doddle!

$ cd my/unalphabetised/project
$ yalphabetize

Yalphabetize can even automatically alphabetize your YAML files for you. Just run:

$ cd my/unalphabetised/project
$ yalphabetize -a

To only run yalphabetize on a specific directory or file:

$ cd my/unalphabetised/project
$ yalphabetize path/to/directory path/to/file.yml

will run yalphabetize on all files within the path/to/directory directory as well as the path/to/file.yml file.

Yalphabetize can be configured through a .yalphabetize.yml file in your projects root directory.

only is used to specify the yaml files which yalphabetize will inspect. When unspecified or empty, the default is to inspect all yaml files in the project. When files are specified as command line arguments, only configuration is ignored.

Example:

# .yalphabetize.yml

only:
  - a_file.yml
  - a/directory/
  - a/glob/**/*.yml

exclude is used to specify the yaml files which yalphabetize should not inspect within your project.

Example:

# .yalphabetize.yml

exclude:
  - a_file.yml
  - a/directory/
  - a/glob/**/*.yml

sort_by is used to specify the ordering which Yalphabetize uses when sorting a yaml file.

Examples of the four possible configuration values and their corresponding yaml ordering:

sort_by: 'ABab' (default)

Apples: 1
Bananas: 2
apples: 3
bananas: 4

sort_by: 'abAB'

apples: 1
bananas: 2
Apples: 3
Bananas: 4

sort_by: AaBb

Apples: 1
apples: 2
Bananas: 3
bananas: 4

sort_by: aAbB

apples: 1
Apples: 2
bananas: 3
Bananas: 4

indent_sequences is used to specify the indentation style of block sequences within mappings when the autocorrector is generating new YAML.

Examples:

indent_sequences: true (default)

Fruit:
  - Apples
  - Bananas

indent_sequences: false

Fruit:
- Apples
- Bananas

allowed_orders is used to specify custom sorting orders for matching sets (or subsets) of keys which you want to sort in an order that is not alphabetical.

Example:

allowed_orders:
  - [one two three four five]
  - [january february march april may]

months:
# The keys in this mapping match an allowed order exactly.
# They are ordered according to the matching allowed order.
  january: 1
  february: 2
  march: 3
  april: 4
  may: 5
numbers:
# The keys in this mapping match a subset of an allowed order.
# They are ordered according to the matching allowed order.
  one: 1
  two: 2
  three: 3
numbers_extended: 
# The keys in this mapping do not match an allow order or a subset of an allowed order (notice the extra `zero` key
# which does not appear in the allowed order of numbers).
# They are ordered alphabetically.
  one: 1
  three: 3
  two: 2
  zero: 0

Yalphabetize will preserve all YAML comments which start on their own line. This is an experiemental feature which can be disabled via preserve_comments:

preserve_comments: false

Please note: Yalphabetize will not preserve inline/line-end comments (see known issues).

When Yalphabetize autocorrects the ordering of a YAML file, comments will be reordered with the YAML line immediately following them. For example:

# Bananas are long
bananas: 2
# Apples are round
apples: 1

becomes

# Apples are round
apples: 1
# Bananas are long
bananas: 2

Comments at the end of a YAML document remain at the end of the document. For example:

bananas: 2
apples: 1
# This comment is at the end

becomes

apples: 1
bananas: 2
# This comment is at the end

To ensure comments remain at the top of a YAML file, they should be placed before the start of the YAML document. For example:

# This comment is at the start
---
bananas: 2
apples: 1

becomes

# This comment is at the start
---
apples: 1
bananas: 2

Yalphabetize is a great addition to any linting you might currently perform as part of CI. The yalphabetize executable exits with exit code 0 when no offences are detected, or exits with 1 if offences are detected.

Example travis script:

# .travis.yml

script:
  - bundle exec yalphabetize
  - bundle exec rubocop
  - bundle exec rails_best_practices
  - bundle exec rspec

We aim for yalphabetize to be compatible with all actively maintained Ruby versions.

We currently support:

• MRI 3.1 - 3.3

• Yalphabetize cannot currently preserve inline comments while automatically alphabetising a YAML file. We recommend that you refactor any inline comments onto their own line. Otherwise, any inline comments will have to be replaced after alphabetisation.

We appreciate all contributions for this gem. You are very welcome to submit pull requests and issues and we will do our best to address them ASAP. Happy coding!