TSBSoftware.TextBlock 1.0.3

TextBlock

Makes F# multiline strings work like C# Raw string literal, or Java text blocks.

Who is it for?

F# developers who would like to utilize multiline strings to format content, such as: html, xml, sql, templates, etc.

Getting Started

To start using TextBlock, install the nuget package into your project file.

dotnet add package TSBSoftware.TextBlock

Then, open the namespace to expose the extension.

open TextBlock

let myText =
    """
    <div>
        <p>Hello</p>
    </div>
    """
        .TextBlock()

This will produce the following string:

<div>
    <p>Hello</p>
</div>

Without using TextBlock, there would be an extra level of indentation because of how F# processes multiline strings:

    <div>
        <p>Hello</p>
    </div>

Extra Examples

Strings can contain embedded newline characters.

let embeddedNewlines =
    let nl = System.Environment.NewLine
    $"""
    This content has {nl}several lines
    in {nl}the text.
    """
        .TextBlock()

This will produce

This content has
several lines
in
the text.

Newlines can be escaped with a backslash.

let myText =
    """
    Hello \
    World!
    """
        .TextBlock()

This will escape the newline character and combine the text into a single line:

Hello World!

Spaces at the end of each line can be preserved.

let blockedLines =
    """
    Blocked   |
    Text      |
    """
        .TextBlock()

This will produce the following. Spaces represented by periods.

Blocked...
Text......

Additional indentation can be applied. An indentation character can optionally be applied, which is a space by default. We will use a period to show what is applied.

let someHtml =
    """
    <div>
        <p>Hello</p>
    </div>
    """
        .TextBlock(indent = 4, indentChar = '.')

This will produce the following:

....<div>
....    <p>Hello</p>
....</div>