I have been wracking my brain trying to figure this out. For the first time I used jEdit the other day and I was pleasantly surprised that it auto indented my code (meaning that I'd put in the following code:
int method () {
_ //<-- and it put me here automatically
I've tried to get the same thing working with eclipse but with no success. I got into the code formatter but I don't see how to make that happen.
Is it possible to do this? Also while I'm here, is there a such thing as a eclipse plugin that will allow you to search the methods and classes of the standard java library?
Thanks
Personally all I use for this is the format options Window->preferences under Java->Code Style ->Formatter.
I once took the time to tweek how I like my code to look like when I work and exported the whole thing. After that I just code without too much bother on what it looks like. When I find the code looks messy by pressing the combination ctrl+shift+f and the whole class becomes pretty again, comments and all.
After a while it pretty much became a reflex...
code code code
ctrl-s, ctrl-b (cause I disable auto build sometimes), ctrl-shift-f
code some more etc...
Once I got used to this I never really cared how it presented the code as i was typing because I knew it would look all pretty as soon as the loop/if/switch/method etc is finished
My clean eclipse install does this by default.
Have you changed any options? Make sure the file you are editing has the .java file extension. The preference options that control the typing automations are under Java -> Editor -> Typing in the Window -> Preferences menu.
Also, I find that the auto-indenting, and most of the other auto-complete functions of eclipse do not function well if the file I am editing has errors in it which prevent compilation. Make sure that your curly-braces are matched correctly, this is the main one that I've noticed blocks auto-indent.
Regarding searching through the standard Java libraries, use the Search -> Java.. menu option, and check the JRE libraries checkbox, then search away. You can also use the Hierarchy view to see how the classes relate. Also, in the Package and Project views you can expand the JRE System Library, and then expand rt.jar which holds pretty much all the standard Java pacakges.
Eclipse has always done this for me by default.
One really cool thing about eclipse is that you can search preference pages. Just right click and go to prefrences. Go to the "Window" menu, and click "Prefrences". Then at the top of the tree view there's a text box that says "type filter text". Replace that with "indent" and it should bring up the page where the indent option is.
Make sure that eclipse recognizes your file as a java file, that you're using the Java distribution, the latest version, etc.
Iv been trying to work around the eclipse indenting and other supposed features for years, and it seems that the bottom line is this ...
It only works for the programming style of the authors, so to use it you need to modify your style to comply.
This would be OK except that the authors of eclipse have some very strange ideas about common shortcut keys.
One horrid example is the search features, eg when did Ctrl+K become "Find Next occurrence" and why doesnt F3 or n work?
That all being said I use eclipse because if you have the time to wait around while it starts up - or never close it - and you can modify everything youve learned about using an editor - why why why - then it will certainly increase your efficiency.
Please note that there is a preference setting for indenting, it can be set for a project, a workspace, or globally, but no matter how you set it eclipse will still chuck tab characters in where you dont want them.
In fact its indent crazy, like it wants to indent everything, even if its already indented.
Like I said Iv been using it for years and it STILL drives me nuts with its random behavior.
Follow these steps for Eclipse:
Select all text: ctrl+A
Correct indentation: ctrl+I
You should check:
Hidden features/tricks for Eclipse?
What is your favorite hot-key in Eclipse?
Related
I just discovered that my NetBeans suddenly stops importing classes that are found in the Java API but can still import classes from my external libraries. Take a look at the image below:
As you can see, List and ArrayList are classes from the java.util package but the usual suggestions for importing them are not shown here, instead it is asking me to create class. I know that I can type import java.util.List; on the top of the code but life was better before! Please I need help thanks.
I had the same problem a couple minutes ago... Terrible. The same problem has been reported here:
Bug 235712
The solution which I've found there was sufficient - simply delete the Netbeans cache...
In order to do this, go to Help ==> About . Then go to the directory with cache and delete all you find in the "index" catalog.
After restarting the NB, everything was cool.
Today I came across the same problem. It happens that it actually is very easy to exclude a class from code completion if you click in the wrong place while working.
To solve it (netbeans 8.2) go to
Tools - Options -> Editor tab
Then select Code Completion Tab
In the drop Down select JAVA (in my case it was Java)
You will find a box bellow titled Package/Classes
In the EXCLUDE tab you probably will find the packages marked to be excluded from code completion. Just remove the ones you want back.
Check under Preferences->Editor->Code Completion to make sure auto complete is on, though by your screen shot I assume that it is.
Also try Preferences->Editor->Formatting and set your Language to Java
In my case, NetBeans was refusing to suggest Scanner. As it turned out, all I had to do was remove java.util.Scanner from Options » Editor » Code Completion » Packages/classes: » Exclude. Then the autocompletion for Scanner returned.
I spent a lot of time googling, now I'll try it here. Some of you might know the "regions" available in Microsoft Visual Studio, which allow you to collaps an arbitrary part of your code to just a single line, more or less like
// [start] The text which will appear instead of the collapsed part
...
A bunch of lines of code
...
// [end]
In my opinion this is a really fine way to comment code, but it doesn't seem to be available for Java and Eclipse. However, there was a plugin for that ( click ) but it doesn't work with Eclipse Helios.
So here's my question: Do you know a way to achieve this kind of code folding in a current version of eclipse?
You can try this one - http://incubator.apache.org/isis/ide-support.html
It claims to be working on Eclipse 3.5, so there is a chance it will work on 3.6/3.7 (you will have to try).
Hope that helps!
I just started using eclipse for some personal projects and am finding the transition from IntelliJ (what I use at work) kind of annoying. I hope it's kosher to ask a few different questions in the same thread. Here goes:
1) How do I get "views" (I'm not sure if this is the term. I mean windows such as Project Explorer, Servers, Console, etc) to stay expanded and on top even after I've clicked back on the editor or another view. I'm pretty sure that right now all of these tabs are "quick views" that I have minimized and then docked, so I may not be doing this right to begin with. In IntelliJ, I would simply just pin the tab.
2) How can I open a file (for instance, an ant build.xml) without having to make it part of an eclipse project? I want the syntax highlighting and Ctrl-click ability that the IDE will give me (not to mention being able to use eclipse's built-in ant), but I don't need to associate the file with any others and so don't see the point of having to make it a part of a project.
3) Is it just me (wouldn't be surprised) or does eclipse have a bug with parsing empty html tags within the body of html tags of the same type. I've only tested this in a JSP, and it doesn't happen with JSF tags. For example: <div id="foo"><div id="bar"/></div>. Eclipse will give a warning saying the first div tag has no end tag. This is with the most recent version of eclipse for Java EE, no plugins have been installed.
4) Finally, a general question: Any best practices or resources to look at for organizing the eclipse interface and perspectives/views? What about workspaces/projects? Is there some tutorial out there that would be really informative that I could read through in less than an hour?
I appreciate any answers and tips/tricks.
First of all, please acknowledge that there are different people in the world and there are people who don't work the "Eclipse way". Even if I was paid for it (and I am), I couldn't work with IDEA. So if Eclipse rubs you the wrong way, it may not be for you. That out of the way, your answers:
In Eclipse, you open a view and let it stay where it is. In IDEA, the view changes all the time, things pop up and go away. Eclipse is static unless you specifically move things around. There are two ways to move things: You can minimize a part (a part is something which contains tabbed views). This moves the part into the closest border. Or you can maximize the current part (Ctrl-M). This pushes all other parts out of the way. Another Ctrl-M will restore the view.
This is a good place to show the difference between IDEA and Eclipse. IDEA tries to anticipate what you're doing and to be helpful. For me, this means it always gets in my way. It will start to format source as I type, things move, etc. That freaks me out. Eclipse is like a toolbox. Everything is there but you have to pick it up. A toolbox doesn't move on its own accord and it doesn't try to be smart.
Eclipse is based on the idea of a workspace. The workspace is the universe and nothing outside exists. If you need to go outside, you must first create a file or folder. In the "New File/Folder" wizard, you can open the advanced options (at the bottom) and link this resource to a real file/folder in the file system. May sound like a lot of effort but it allows Eclipse to display virtually anything in the explorer since it just shows "resources" in there, not actually files.
Smells like a bug. Please report it at https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/
I'm not aware of anything.
[EDIT] 3. As cletus pointed out, is not valid HTML. So that might cause the warning.
An Eclipse Perspective is a collection Views and their position. You can customize or create new perspectives, but the existing ones are good enough for a start (Java, J2EE, Java Browsing etc.). I recommend to stick with the default layout for a while until you've managed to use the quick view feature (which, personally, i find quite annoying). On small screens, i simply like to use Ctrl-M to switch the Editor to fullscreen mode and back, without the need of minimizing single views or move them around.
Yes, you can run external build scripts as well and it's called External Tool in Eclipse. Go to Run > External Tools > External Tools Configurations. Create either a new Ant-based config or a native executable (Program). The location of the build script or executable can either be workspace-relative (Browse Workspace) or absolute on the file system (Browse File System)
Is there a quick way to make Eclipse put curly brace on the next line (by itself) on a block of code?
Yes, edit your active profile (Java...Code Style...Formatter), and change the brace positions to the next line. Also, in Java..Editor..Typing, you can have it automatically insert your braces at the correct position.
For pre-written block of code, first do the settings as suggested by Don and then select that piece of code and right click Source Code->Format and the formatting would take place as per the settings done in the preferences.
Current versions of eclipse have a more convenient way of doing this.
Go to Preferences->Java->Code Style->Formatter
Click on edit, and on the new opened window, go to the Braces tab. Here you can choose how different types of blocks of code organize their curly braces.
Hope this helps any who google this, and find this post. (Like myself)
Regards to all!
The simplest and global way:
Go to Window -> Preferences.
Then in search put: "brace".
Select -> Java -> Code Style-> Formatter
After opening new window go to brace tab and change it as you prefer.
Coming from C# background I couldn't come to grips with built in Java formatting of Eclipse.
With some effort I managed to get most of what Visual Studio used to offer me. Here is an XML version of it. You can import the file..
Preferences->Java->Code Style->Formatter->Import->Apply
Additionally see arguments on which approach is better on our sister site..
In addition to the methods of changing the settings and ctrl-shift-f to apply, these settings can be done on a per project basis. Simply right-click on your project, choose properties, Java Code Style, and enable the checkbox for "enable project specific settings."
I find this invaluable for use between projects I work on to configure it to match a particular client style, along with other settings to try to match code formatting of existing code. This way, you won't upset other people but can still use your own style on other code bases. :)
Netbeans is great but there's no way to wrap text in it (or hopefully I haven't found it yet). Is there any way to do this, and if not, is there any similarly good IDE for Java with this functionality (hopefully free as well).
You can use word wrap in Netbeans.
Add the following to netbeans.conf (netbeans_installation_path/etc/netbeans.conf, by default /etc/netbeans.conf under linux):
-J-Dorg.netbeans.editor.linewrap=true
to the sixth line so it looks like this:
netbeans_default_options="-J-client -J-Xss2m -J-Xms32m -J-XX:PermSize=32m -J-XX:MaxPermSize=200m -J-Dapple.laf.useScreenMenuBar=true -J-Dapple.awt.graphics.UseQuartz=true -J-Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true -J-Dorg.netbeans.editor.linewrap=true"
and restart Netbeans.
Set the Line Wrap option in Tools->Options->Editor->Formating.
Works fine for me in Netbeans 6.9 and 7
If you do web development you are going to understand why text wrapping is important.
A programmer who has never gotten their hands dirty with HTML has never seen the real web. You can insist on MVC all you want to but 99.9% of the world wide web since its inception wasn't built that way. Unless you're always developing from a clean slate and can use MVC to separate the HTML out AND assuming you have an on-staff web designer who does html/css/javascript or you have an interface developer who you can fob it off on you WILL have to deal with everything that has been developed/kludged/hacked together with what ever technologies were at hand or popular or affordable at the time and now more or less functions as a 'web application'. And 99.9% of the time what you will have to work with is a mix of some kind of a programming language, most likely an interpreted one, with html and javascript all mixed in the same page.
And this means no nice short lines of neat clean java code that oh so conveniently end before 80 characters.
And when you deal with this -- which, dear hearts, is most of the web -- you magically discover the crying need for text wrapping to keep the long lines from making you scroll waaaay to the right to get to the end of it.
Some people. Sheesh. They think the whole universe of development has always fit on 80 characters per line, and from some of these comments, they seem to think it always will.
Netbeans 7 is out and it supports word wrap out of the box!
There's word-wrap eclipse plugin: see http://ahtik.com/blog/eclipse-word-wrap/
Like Joseph said: why would you need this. Java is not white space sensitive and having very long statements does not make your code easy to read.
It always goes back to Ultraedit.
Why can't we as a human race figure this out? netbeans, eclipse, zend studio (eclipse), etc don't do something very simple for programming, that most programmers -need to have- to keep a sound coding convention. Sure, it's true that coding style contributes to length of lines (erm microsoft programmers, perk your ears), but sometimes one cannot avoid long string literals. This is insanity! And yet I can't be mad or ungrateful because it's open source. And i -am- grateful. Still, one has to wonder wtf programmers who make these editors are actually using themselves.
I want an editor to wrap at column 80 or 120, not at the window's edge like notepad++. The only tool I've found that does hard/soft wrapping is ultraedit, so maybe I should try to see if I can get it to run under wine, since UE is the only 'real' editor that does it's job other than something weird / ugly / takes forever to learn and configure like emacs. And I am not going down that road- it gives me migranes to look at it because it's 2009 and we have cleartext and guis.
Is it really that difficult a problem to solve? If you draw a line down from column x and your word crosses over it, then put the beginning of the word under the indention of the line from which it started and mark the spill over row as a wrap row. Done.
Actually i heard netbeans is going to add word wrap feature in 6.7 release but then they decided to include this feature in 7.0 . hopefully we would see word wrap in the next release, according to few developers this isn't a necessary feature but for web developers this is totally needed.
There is a great solution to this at this website blog.robbychen.com
The jist is to add the following line inside the quotes for netbeans_default_options inside the config file then restart netbeans:
-J-Dorg.netbeans.editor.linewrap=true
Except Eclipse does not support word wrap either, and they even don't have set up a target for this. Just like Netbeans, this has been asked by many users, but was never included. It appears it requires much change, and as well does not seem to be a high priority for devs.
There was once a beginning of a plugin trying to word wrap in a limited way, but of course it does not work on recent versions.
When you get to where you want the line to end, just start a new line without ending the statement. It may underline it in red until you end the statement, but it won't cause any exceptions.
I find that it is also a good way to organize long println() statements.
Komodo Edit. In addition to its many other marvelous features, it actually wraps lines.
2 points:
Just found that wrapping is really needed if one wants to look into those damn SVG sources auto-generated when putting components from SVG palette...
I'm going to solve my current problem with seeing full SVG source by copy-paste to jEdit which is as configurable as Ultraedit (in the aspect of wrapping) and FoC!
As many have already noted, the answer is "you can't." As someone who uses Visual Studio and Eclipse-based products every day, when I am using Eclipse, I am constantly missing Visual Studio's line wrapping features, which I can turn on and off with a keystroke.
To the many people who have responded "you don't need this," stop being so condescending. Simply because you don't need a feature doesn't mean nobody else in the world does. Even if one were to religiously follow the advice "never have a line over 80 characters," you're going to need to edit code that others have composed and goes over 80 chars. And especially in the web-world, lines can get tremendously long. It's inevitable that you'll spend a lot of time looking at other people's code that goes way over 80 chars.
jEdit's line wrapping is very good. It preserves indentation and can be turned on an off very quickly. If I'm dealing with some very unwieldy long lines, I sometimes copy/paste in jEdit (which offers syntax highlighting for a myriad of languages) and use the line wrapping available there.
The new version of Netbeans supports it. See this post for instructions:
Word Wrap in Netbeans
Of course word wrap is useful for coders - what about when you're writing README.txt files and you have to stick to coding standards like http://drupal.org/node/161085 where is says there needs to be an 80 character word wrap.
In netbeans 7.3 you go to tools->options->editor->formatting, in the left menu area select the bottom most drop down that says line wrap, select your preference...done
Get a bigger monitor.
At 1920 x 1080 you don't need no steenkin word-wrap.
Update:
Wow, still getting downvotes. Maybe it's just how I said it. At least it hasn't caught up to the Eclipse answer yet.
I really thought this was a legitimate suggestion. I never thought that having a bigger monitor would make as much of a difference to coding as it has for me. If you're using a small monitor to code please consider getting a nice big new one. It does eliminate the need for word wrap in a lot of cases.