Vim: Writing function skeleton - formatting

Question

When writing new functions with Vim I always seem to have to do a bit of "manual" work.
x = Cursor position
If I start typing a function and insert a couple of curly braces and the end
function Apples() {x}
Then hit Enter, it obviously looks like this
function Apples() {
x}
Which results in me having to ESC,O in order to shift the closing curlybrace down.
While this may seem like a trivial matter, doing this over the last 5 months is getting bothersome, and I know there are plenty like me out there who knows there should be an elegant solution to this. I am open to plugin-suggestions.

Answer 1

You can use a simple mapping like this one (there are dozens of variants floating around SO and the web):
inoremap {} {<CR>}<C-o>O
You can also search www.vim.org for a dedicated plugin.
But I strongly recommend you to try a snippet-expansion plugin like Snipmate or UltiSnips. Both plugins follow the same model but they have slightly different snippet syntaxes and features. It works like that:
you type a trigger:
fun
you hit <Tab> and you get the following with function_name in select mode:
function [function_name]() {
}
you type your desired name:
function Apples|() {
}
you hit <Tab> to place the cursor between the parentheses:
function Apples(|) {
}
you hit <Tab> again to place the cursor on the line below with the correct indentation:
function Apples() {
|
}

Answer 2

With lh-bracket (in C or C++ mode), when you hit enter whilst in between two brackets, the newlines you are expecting are inserted.
The idea is to test for: getline(".")[col(".")-2:col(".")-1]=="{}" and execute/insert "\<cr>\<esc>O" when the condition is true, or "\<cr>" otherwise.
Within lh-bracket, I have the following into a C-ftplugin:
call lh#brackets#enrich_imap('<cr>',
\ {'condition': 'getline(".")[col(".")-2:col(".")-1]=="{}"',
\ 'action': 'Cpp_Add2NewLinesBetweenBrackets()'},
\ 1,
\ '\<cr\>'
\ )
function! Cpp_Add2NewLinesBetweenBrackets()
return "\<cr>\<esc>O"
endfunction
I guess (code not tested) it would (*) translate into:
" put it into ftplugin/{yourfiltetype, javascript?}.vim
inoremap <buffer> <silent> <expr> <cr> s:SmartCR()
function s:SmartCR()
return getline(".")[col(".")-2:col(".")-1]=="{}"
\ ? "\<cr>\<esc>O"
\ : "\<cr>"
endfunction
(*) Actually, lh#brackets#enrich_imap does a few other things (the mapping is compatible with LaTeXSuite's IMAP.vim presence ; the mapping can be toggled on/off along with all the other mappings from lh-brackets)