JavaScript Mode Forces Tabs

http://codemirror.net/mode/javascript/index.html

editor.setOption("indentWithTabs", false);

Should stop inserting tabs and start using spaces, but still inserts tabs.

[markhillard]

@chriscoyier, I know this is an old issue, but I came across the following code via this Stack Overflow question / example: http://jsfiddle.net/nktvt8vf/12/

extraKeys: {
    'Tab': 'indentMore'
}

This maintains normal tab behavior (spaces/tabs depending on your settings) on an empty line as well as multi-line indenting, but also indents the beginning of a line of code. It also plays nice with Emmet.

I could see how this might be useful in CodePen… thought I’d give you a shout.

[PullJosh]

This remains an issue that has nothing to do with the CodeMirror core, but I found this page when I had the same problem with emmet and eventually came to a solution that I thought would be valuable to share.

---

Previously, I had the following settings:

extraKeys: {
  Tab: 'emmetExpandAbbreviation',
  Enter: 'emmetInsertLineBreak'
}

This wasn’t working because emmet would sometimes choose to indent automatically using two spaces, but whenever there was nothing to expand, emmet would pass off the tab key event to the default CodeMirror handler, which indented using a tab character.

The solution for this was to handle the pass-off action manually:

extraKeys: {
  Tab: cm => {
    // Default emmet behavior
    if (cm.execCommand('emmetExpandAbbreviation') === true) return

    // Otherwise indent with spaces, not tabs
    const spaces = Array(cm.getOption('indentUnit') + 1).join(' ')
    cm.replaceSelection(spaces)
  },
  Enter: 'emmetInsertLineBreak'
}

---

Again, sorry for continuing an issue that’s not a problem with CodeMirror directly, but I think it’s valuable to have this answer here to save others time in the future.