How to control the formatting style of the generated schema ?

[Yohannfra]

This is a very minor issue, but it bothers and maybe it's possible.

I generated the schema.ts file with node ace migration:run

And when looking into it I find it hard to read because there is no line break in the models between the columns, eg:

export class UserSchema extends BaseModel {
  static $columns = ['createdAt', 'email', 'fullName', 'id', 'isAdmin', 'password', 'updatedAt'] as const
  $columns = UserSchema.$columns
  @column.dateTime({ autoCreate: true })
  declare createdAt: DateTime
  @column()
  declare email: string
  @column()
  declare fullName: string | null
  @column({ isPrimary: true })
  declare id: number
  @column()
  declare isAdmin: boolean | null
  @column({ serializeAs: null })
  declare password: string
  @column.dateTime({ autoCreate: true, autoUpdate: true })
  declare updatedAt: DateTime | null
}

Which is funny because in the documentation the line break is present https://lucid.adonisjs.com/docs/schema-classes#step-3-examine-the-generated-schema-class

Is there a flag to do that ? Maybe with prettier ?

This is minor but since we're going to read and use this file over and over this could be a nice benefit over time.

Thank you.

[manimovassagh]

The schema generator currently does not add blank lines between column declarations. This is not configurable via a flag.

The simplest fix is to run Prettier (or your formatter of choice) on the generated file after generation:

node ace generate:schema
npx prettier --write app/models/schema.ts

If you want the blank lines between columns specifically, Prettier alone will not add them — it only handles indentation and line length. But you can use a quick sed/script to insert them:

# Add a blank line before every @column decorator
sed -i '/@column/i\\' app/models/schema.ts

Or in a more robust way with a small Node script:

import { readFile, writeFile } from "fs/promises";

const content = await readFile("app/models/schema.ts", "utf-8");
const formatted = content.replace(/(\n)(  @column)/g, "$1\n$2");
await writeFile("app/models/schema.ts", formatted);

You could add this as a post-generation hook in your package.json:

{
  "scripts": {
    "schema": "node ace generate:schema && node scripts/format-schema.mjs"
  }
}

Agreed this would be a nice quality-of-life improvement in the generator itself — the docs show it with blank lines, so the output should match. Might be worth opening a PR for it if you are up for it; it would likely be a small change in the code generation template.

[Yohannfra]

I've updated your script a little for my setup

import { readFile, writeFile } from 'node:fs/promises'

const SCHEMA_PATH = 'database/schema.ts'

const content = await readFile(SCHEMA_PATH, 'utf-8')

// Add a blank line before @column decorators, but only if one isn't already there
const formatted = content.replace(/(?<!\n)\n( {2}@column)/g, '\n\n$1')

await writeFile(SCHEMA_PATH, formatted)

Thank you for the idea !