How To Maintain Consistent Code Formatting In Your SaaS

To minimize chaos in a codebase, you have to enforce standards. No two programmers might write the same kind of code.

As a result, this can lead to wild inconsistencies when reviewing and merging in code in terms of style. This could mean varying amounts of whitespace, different sets of quotation marks, undeclared variables, and a lack of consistent best practices.

As a solo founder, you can’t go running after developers for these things or worry about them as you build. Having a system in place for handling these things will solve the problem.

Fortunately, this isn’t so complicated that you have to do some AI magic to set it up. It’s as simple as installing some packages to do that for you if you’re building in React or Next.js. Those packages are Prettier and ESLint.

Now, if you’d rather skip all this setup and get coding, use a SaaS boilerplate. It takes care of the setup for you. But if you’re starting from scratch or want to understand how these tools work, read on.

ESLint

ESLint is like your English grammar teacher, just for JavaScript code. It sees what you write, underlines it, and eventually it gets so mad at you that you get detention.

Truthfully, AI hasn’t turned ESLint into a real English grammar teacher yet, so all you’ll get are some squiggly underlines and some guidance when your code is off the standard it is validating against.

If you’re building a Next.js app, you’ll get it out of the box by running next lint. You can even integrate and configure it by following the official documentation on Next.js and ESLint.

AirBnB made its style guide publicly available, so you can use their ESLint configuration as a template to get started if you’d like.

Prettier

Prettier is like a coloring book that helps you color inside the lines. It cleans up all the mess you leave behind from coding quickly and makes sure your code looks more readable.

You can add Prettier to your Next.js app’s ESLint config and then install the VSCode extension to save you time. Once you’ve installed the extension, go to your Preferences and search for “Format on Save”. Check the box next to it, and you’ll never have to worry about formatting your code again.

For any SaaS project built with Next.js, maintaining a codebase that is both easy to read and free from subtle bugs is crucial for scalability and collaboration. Prettier ensures that your project's aesthetic is nothing short of professional, while ESLint provides the deeper analysis necessary to keep your code functioning optimally.

Together, they automate what can often be tedious manual reviews and allow you to focus more on feature development rather than fixing style inconsistencies or debugging preventable errors.