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org.netbeans.modules.editor.codetemplates/1 1.50.0 1

Editor Code Templates
Stable

See: Description

Editor Code Templates 
Package Description
org.netbeans.lib.editor.codetemplates.api  
org.netbeans.lib.editor.codetemplates.spi  

It is a module located under /cvs/editor/codetemplates directory.

It consists of

Code Templates define CodeTemplatesAPI.

What is New (see all changes)?

Use Cases

Code Template Parameters
One of the main benefits of the code templates is their parametrization which allows to substitute the default values for the parameters before the final insertion and it also allows the user to modify these default values explicitly after the code template gets inserted into the document.
The parameters are marked in the code template's text by ${...}.
Parameters of the same name benefit from automatic replication. Once the template gets pasted into the document all the parameter's occurrences get replaced by parameter's default value.
The first parameter's occurrence gets selected.
The user can now replace the default value. If the user does so the new value gets replicated to all the other occurrences of this parameter automatically.
Mime-type specific operation
Each code template needs to find the default values for its parameters before it gets inserted into the text.
Sometimes it's enough to just specify the default value in the template's text but usually the default value gets determined from the context of insertion.
There is an intent to create a mime-type specific code template processor that would be registered per mime-type. There could be even more than one such processors processing the template in a specific order.
Parameter hints
Besides parameter's name the template processors may need additional hints of how to find a default value for the parameter.
For example java code template's parameter may be an index parameter which means that the infrastructure should fill in a fresh index variable e.g. i.
Or the parameter can only be of a certain java type such as in the case of iterating through a collection the type must be subtype of java.util.Collection.
These requirements could be specified as additional hints to the parameters e.g. ${i index} or ${c instanceof=java.util.Collection}.
The hints allow string literals to support arbitrary explicit default values specifications e.g. ${x default="Hello world"}.
The '{' and '}' have no special meaning inside the string literal.
The '"' char is allowed to be used by escaping ${x default="\"quoted string\""}.
Temporary Code Templates
The Code Completion functionality allows to build temporary Code Templates functionality if it could build a temporary template for completing of the method parameters. The parameters could be completed one by one by tabbing and the Code Templates framework would fill in proper default values just like it does for regular templates.
    JTextComponent pane = ...
    String tempCodeTemplateText = ...
    CodeTemplate ct = CodeTemplateManager.get(pane.getDocument()).createTemporary(tempCodeTemplateText);
    ct.insert(pane);
Insert Text Building and Updating
The parametrized text of the code template first gets parsed and the parameters get their default values which by default are the names of the parameters. The code template processor are then called to update this default value.
The new java infrastructure being developed would benefit from the possibility to obtain the full string containing the skeleton of the code template (without parameters) with the present default values. It can take that string and locally parse it to find out types of local variables used in the particular template and fill in dependent variable types.
Parameter Editability
Certain part of the code template may change text but it should not be edited by the user. For example when iterating over collection given as a parameter the collection may be generics-ed by additional type. The iterator's variable type then also needs to generics-ed with the same type.
The iterator's type parameter should not be editable because this operation may be done automatically by the java code template processor.
There should be a hint editable having true/false.

Exported Interfaces

This table lists all of the module exported APIs with defined stability classifications. It is generated based on answers to questions about the architecture of the module. Read them all...
Group of java interfaces
Interface NameIn/OutStabilitySpecified in What Document?
CodeTemplatesAPIExportedStable

Group of lookup interfaces
Interface NameIn/OutStabilitySpecified in What Document?

Implementation Details

Where are the sources for the module?

The sources for the module are in the NetBeans Mercurial repositories.

What do other modules need to do to declare a dependency on this one, in addition to or instead of a plain module dependency?
Nothing.

Read more about the implementation in the answers to architecture questions.

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org.netbeans.modules.editor.codetemplates/1 1.50.0 1