Is it possible to edit the content assistance of Eclipse? Sort of add rules or functions for it? I'm aware that Eclipse is open-sourced, but I was there an "easier way" or an interface?
For example, I'm working in Java 1.4.2, so I don't believe I have the magical "autoboxing"(am I correct in thinking that autoboxing would solve this issue?) . So when I'm working with getting parameters from a request, they all return strings when I may need a Long or an Int. I'm always interested in making things more automated (as any computer scientist usually would), so I was wondering if it was possible to have content assist suggest to use the common java parse functions (Integer.parseInt, Long.parseLong, etc) for the passed in parameters.
If you want to actually augment Content Assist in a highly detailed, customized way, you'd have to write a plugin. Eclipse is very well architected such that there are endless extension points via which plugins can extend base functionality, including Content Assist. But, writing one is not a trivial matter (though a skill that could serve you well, if you have the time to learn it).
Another option is to write your own Java editor template, which can emit any pre-defined snippet of code you want (including inserting parameter values), and will be included in Content Assist. Open Eclipse's Preferences and navigate to Java > Editor > Templates. You can use the ? help button on that Preferences page to learn more about them.
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due to reasons I am working with undocumented java library code that I cannot alter in any way or write into. Im using eclipse 2020-06 and I would like to leaves some notes for myself to make things easier. Is there a way to do that? or maybe an eclipse extension?
You can use bookmarks. They work somewhat similarly to breakpoints, without pausing execution when you're debugging.
You can add them via the context menu.
If I recall, you're a bit limited by the amount of information you can add. It's basically just a single text box.
See the help section on bookmarks
Maybe there's some plugins which extend the functionality (e.g. this one for adding keyboard shortcuts)
When I try to put final in method parameter eclipse doesn't help. Any idea how to get this to work?
This probably will be as close as you can get to it. It would be a lot of work to do this for every keyword, but since there is only so many of them it's possible. You could probably take it a step further and just write a template for your methods.
Preferences > Java > Editor > Templates
New > Name (alias)
Pattern: "final "
I don't think this is possible.
The closest thing to this is to set a "save action" which will automatically add final modifiers to method parameters when you save the file.
Preferences > Java > Editor > Save Actions
Assuming that you are complaining about the Eclipse Java editor's completion behavior, I don't think there's anything you can do about it.
If it really worries you, create a bug report on the relevant Eclipse component. Better still, create and submit a patch that fixes the problem.
EDIT
I had a trawl through the Eclipse JDT open bugs/issues, and there are various issues related to final in various contexts, though not specifically this one (as far as I can see). It is also worth noting that there are a LOT of open JDT issues ... so an issue with a viable patch is much more likely to receive attention.
Java makes a copy of the parameters, the final parameter in this case doesn't do anything, it doesn't help you access it through an inner/anonymous class. Is there a reason you want it?
I'm beginning to start on my first large project. It will be a program very similar to Rosetta Stone. It will be a program, used for learning a foreign language, written in Java using Swing. In my program I plan on the user being able to select downloaded courses to learn from. I will be able to create an English course since I am a native English speaker. However, I want people who speak other languages to be able to write courses for users to use as well (this is an essential part for my program to work).
Since I want the users to be able to download courses of languages they want, having it hard-coded into the program is out of the question. The courses needed to be interpreted during the runtime. Also since I want others to collaborate with my work (ie make courses), I need to make it easy for them to do so.
What would be the best way to go about doing this?
The idea I have come up with is having a strict empty course outline (hard-coded) with a simple xml file which details the text and sounds to be used. The drawback to this is that it extremely limits the author. Different languages may need to start out with learning different parts.
Any advice on the problem at hand as well as the project as a whole will be greatly appreciated. Any links to any relevant resources or information would also be greatly appreciated.
Think you for your time and effort,
Joseph Pond
Simply, you should base your program on a system such as Eclipse RCP, or the Netbeans Platform. Both of these systems already deal with exactly this problem, and both are perfectly adequate for this task. They're not just for IDEs.
It's a larger first step as you will need to learn one of these platforms beyond simply just Swing.
But, they solve the problem, and their overall organization and technique will serve your program well anyway.
Don't reinvent this wheel, just learn one of these instead.
If you are set on doing this from scratch (Will's idea isn't bad), What I would do is first lay down the file format that would be easiest to create your language course in. It could be XML, plaintext or some other format you come up with yourself.
You will probably need some flexibility in the language format because you will want to actually be able to specify things like questions and answers. XML is a pain because of all the extra terminators, but it gives a good amount of meta-data. If you like XML for that, you may consider defining your language file in YML, it gives you the data of XML but uses whitespace delineators instead of angle brackets.
You probably also want to define your file in the language it's created for, so you might or might not want to require english words as keys. If you don't want any english, you may have to skip both XML and YML and come up with your own file format--possibly where the layout and/or special symbols define the flow and "functionality".
Once you have defined the file format, you won't have to worry about hard-coding anything... you won't be able to because it will already be in the file.
Plug-in functionality would be nice as well... This is where your definition file also contains information that tells you what class to instantiate (reflectively) and use to parse/display the data. In that way you could add new types of questions just by delivering a new jar file.
If this is confusing, sorry, this is difficult in a one-way forum because I can't look at your face and see if you're following me or if I'm even going in the right direction. If you think I'm on the right track and want more details (I've done a bit of this stuff before) feel free to leave a follow-up question (or an email address) in a comment and I'd be glad to discuss it with you further.
If I was doing this, I'd seriously consider using Eclipse EMF to model the "language" for defining courses. EMF is rather daunting to start with, but it gives you:
A high-level model that can be entered/edited in a variety of ways.
An automatic mechanism for serializing "instances" (i.e. courses) to XML. (And you can tinker with the serialization if you choose.)
Automatically generated Java classes for in-memory representations of your instances. These provide APIs that are tuned to your model, an generic ones that are the EMF equivalent of Java reflection ... but based on EMF model classes rather than Java classes.
An automatically generated tree editor for your "instances".
Hooks for implementing your own constraints / validation rules to say what is a valid "course".
Related Eclipse plugins offer:
Mappings to text-based languages with generation of parsers/unparsers
Mappings to graphical languages; e.g. notations using boxes / arrows / etc
Various more advanced persistence mechanisms
Comparisons/differencing, model-to-model transformations, constraints in OCL, etc
I've used EMF in a couple of largish projects, and the main point that keeps me coming back for more is ease of model evolution ... compared with building everything at a lower level of abstraction. If my model (language) needs to be extended / changed, I can make the necessary changes using the EMF Model editor, regenerate the code, extend my custom code to do the right stuff with the extensions, and I'm pretty much done (modulo conversion of stored instances).
I'm trying to find a solution to highlight part of a text file in Java.
Basically, what I'm doing is lexing and parsing a text file respecting a certain grammar, storing some information related to the various elements of this file and then logging the information to a database.
I would like to have something more visual like a representation of the text file with some parts highlighted (and an index of the various colors used) - or even better with some context-sensitive information attached to a particular token.
Is there an easy way to do so? Basically what I would like to have, in terms of features, is a really primitive Eclipse plugin for a particular language and stand-alone. Maybe there's a framework to build DSL editors, something like that.
Hope it is clear...
Thanks
I think Xtext is just what you are looking for, it generates an Eclipse editor and more from a grammar.
Although not for Eclipse, there's MPS by JetBrains (the makers of the now open source IntelliJ IDEA) which may be worth taking a look at:
http://www.jetbrains.com/mps/
I am working on an incremental builder for Java code in Eclipse. Eclipse provides a ResourceDelta that tells me which resources have changed since the last build. However, I would like to have more detailed information, e.g. what methods or what field definitions changed. There seems to be functionality similar to what I want in the "compare with -> each other" view. However, this code is quite disconnected from the build engine and seems incompatible with ResourceDeltas. What would be a good way to figure out what I want? The best solution I can see is to compare two ASTs, but I also could not find any built-in support for that.
JavaCore does supply this information via the IElementChangedListener and IJavaElementDelta interfaces. Here's a quick code sample to get you started:
JavaCore.addElementChangedListener(new MyJavaElementChangeReporter(), ElementChangedEvent.POST_RECONCILE);
More details available in Manipulating Java code from the JDT Plug-in Developer Guide.