How to run *BOTH* black and autopep8 *AUTOMATICALLY* upon saving a Python file in Visual Studio Code?

Question

Under the settings.json file in VS Code, I've got black set as the Python formatter:

"python.formatting.provider": "black",
"python.linting.enabled": true,
"python.linting.pylintEnabled": true,
"python.linting.mypyEnabled": true,
"python.linting.lintOnSave": true,    
"python.formatting.blackArgs": [
    "--line-length",
    "120"
],
"python.formatting.autopep8Args": [
    "--max-line-length",
    "120",
    "--in-place"
],
"python.linting.flake8Enabled": true,
"python.linting.flake8Args": [
    "--max-line-length",
    "120",
    "--ignore=E501",
]

Black does a fantastic job formatting Python code, but unfortunately any flake8 errors are not corrected by black. So Flake8 errors like Expected 2 blank lines, found 0 (E302) are not fixed upon saving a .py file in VS Code.

Fortunately those Flake8 errors CAN be fixed if you run autopep8 --in-place <your_python_script.py> but obviously this is annoying as it requires an extra manual step.

So the natural question is: how to enable BOTH black and autopep8 --in-place to run and trigger upon saving any .py file?

My understanding is that VS Code has a setting python.formatting.provider that you can set to black, or autopep8, or yapf, etc. But it only accepts a single formatting provider, and not two.

How to configure VS Code to apply more than one formatter to Python files upon saving those files?

Alternatively, is there a way to trigger autopep8 --in-place to be triggered upon saving a Python file (in addition to the black formatter)?

Answer 1

note this configuration when working with black you'll want to use black's recommended settings

max-line-length = 88
extend-ignore = E203