Smart electric brace in cc-modes (C#, Java, etc.)

Question

In various IDEs, typing an open-curly results in the appearance of a matched pair of brace characters. Typically the braces are inserted in some context-sensitive way. Within a string literal, there is no intervening newline inserted between the braces. Outside a string literal, there is a newline, and things are indented immediately.

{
    _cursor_
}

As I continue to type at the cursor, all new code is properly indented.

In Emacs, though, by default in my cc-mode (csharp-mode, java-mode, etc.), an open-curly runs self-insert-command which just inserts the open brace with no indent. The close-curly runs c-electric-brace, which indents the close curly only, not the full scope. The result is while I am keying within the curly scope, the indentation is all wrong, and I have to manually re-indent the curly scope when it closes.

Is there an easy way to get Emacs to behave like the popular IDEs I have used? I have written some Emacs Lisp to do, it but it is not very general and I want to know if I am mising something.

I know about the skeleton-pair-insert-maybe function. It inserts matched pairs of whatever: braces, parens, quotes, angle brackets, square brackets. But that function doesn't do any context-sensitive indenting and doesn't give me the blank newline. Is there a way to get it to indent or ... is there another function I should bind to open-curly to get what I want?

PS: my Emacs Lisp looks like this:

; The default binding for "open curly" was skeleton-pair-insert-maybe.  It
; inserts a pair of braces and then does not insert a newline, and does not
; indent.  I want the braces to get newlines and appropriate indenting.  I
; think there is a way to get this to happen appropriately just within emacs,
; but I could not figure out how to do it.  So I wrote this alternative.  The
; key thing is to determine if the point is within a string.  In cc-mode, this
; is at least sometimes done by looking at the font face.  Then, if not in a
; literal string, do the appropriate magic.  This seems to work.
(defun cheeso-insert-open-brace ()
  "if point is not within a quoted string literal, insert an open brace, two newlines, and a close brace; indent everything and leave point on the empty line. If point is within a string literal, just insert a pair or braces, and leave point between them."
  (interactive)
  (if
      ; are we inside a string? 
      (c-got-face-at (point) c-literal-faces)
      ; if so, then just insert a pair of braces and put the point between them
      (progn
        (self-insert-command 1)
        (insert "}")
        (backward-char)
        )
    ; not inside a literal string.
    ; therefore, insert paired braces with an intervening newline, and indent everything appropriately.
    (progn
      (self-insert-command 1)
      (c-indent-command)
      (newline)
      (insert "}")
      (c-indent-command)
      (previous-line)
      (newline-and-indent)
      ; point ends up on an empty line, within the braces, properly indented
      )
    )
  )

Answer 1

I accepted the answer from kastauyra, but still went with my own custom elisp to do what I wanted, which was insert a matched set of braces as appropriate. The original elisp code I posted failed for a couple edge cases. This is the updated elisp code I use now.

(defun cheeso-looking-back-at-regexp (regexp)
  "calls backward-sexp and then checks for the regexp.  Returns t if it is found, else nil"
  (interactive "s")
  (save-excursion
    (backward-sexp)
    (looking-at regexp)
    )
  )

(defun cheeso-looking-back-at-equals-or-array-init ()
  "returns t if an equals or [] is immediate preceding. else nil."
  (interactive)
  (cheeso-looking-back-at-regexp "\\(\\w+\\b *=\\|[[]]+\\)")
)  


(defun cheeso-prior-sexp-same-statement-same-line ()
  "returns t if the prior sexp is on the same line. else nil"
  (interactive)
  (save-excursion
    (let ((curline (line-number-at-pos))
          (curpoint (point))
          (aftline (progn
                      (backward-sexp)
                      (line-number-at-pos))) )
      (= curline aftline)
      )
    )
  )  



(defun cheeso-insert-open-brace ()
    "if point is not within a quoted string literal, insert an open brace, two newlines, and a close brace; indent everything and leave point on the empty line. If point is within a string literal, just insert a pair or braces, and leave point between them."
  (interactive)
  (cond

   ;; are we inside a string literan? 
   ((c-got-face-at (point) c-literal-faces)

    ;; if so, then just insert a pair of braces and put the point between them
    (self-insert-command 1)
    (insert "}")
    (backward-char)
    )

   ;; was the last non-space an equals sign? or square brackets?  Then it's an initializer.
   ((cheeso-looking-back-at-equals-or-array-init)
        (self-insert-command 1)
        ;; all on the same line
        (insert "  };")
        (backward-char 3)
        )

    ;; else, it's a new scope.
    ;; therefore, insert paired braces with an intervening newline, and indent everything appropriately.
    (t
     (if (cheeso-prior-sexp-same-statement-same-line)
      (newline-and-indent))
      (self-insert-command 1)
      (c-indent-line-or-region)
      (end-of-line)
      (newline)
      (insert "}")
      ;;(c-indent-command) ;; not sure of the difference here
      (c-indent-line-or-region)
      (previous-line)
      (end-of-line)
      (newline-and-indent)
      ; point ends up on an empty line, within the braces, properly indented
      )
    )
  )

Within my c-mode hook function, I bind the open-curly '{' to cheeso-insert-open-brace, like so:

     (local-set-key (kbd "{") 'cheeso-insert-open-brace)

The result is, when I have something like this:

for(;;)

and then key in a open-curly, I get this:

for(;;)
{
   _cursor_
}

If I have an initializer like this:

byte[] x =

and I key in an open curly, I get this:

byte[] x = { _cursor_ };

Answer 2

This .emacs excerpt (I must have found it on EmacsWiki some time ago) will do what you need:

;; Enter indents the new line
(defun my-make-CR-do-indent ()
  (define-key c-mode-base-map "\C-m" 'c-context-line-break))
(add-hook 'c-initialization-hook 'my-make-CR-do-indent)

Works like this:

int main(void)
{
  {
    {
      {

Nowhere I had to press space or tab to enter it.