Intellij IDEA – in my opinion the most productive IDE for Java – comes with bunch of features helping getting rid of writing repetitive code – which is a everyday business no matter what language you use. One of them is live templates.
Live templates contain predefined code fragments. You can use them to insert frequently-used or custom code constructs into your source code file quickly, efficiently, and accurately.
IDEA comes with a set of live templates for Java, Maven, HTML, CSS and more and also enables to create custom templates.
Inserting live template
There are 2 options to insert live template:
- Type live template abbreviation (for example dep) and next press TAB key
- Use shortcut Command + J (Mac) / Ctrl + J (PC) to popup list of available live templates in current context
At the beginning it’s quite difficult to remember all you wish to use and going back and forth from code to settings or browsing list is not very efficient – especially when you don’t know what you are looking for. That’s why I created gallery of (in my opinion) most useful built-in live templates for Java and Maven that can be used as a cheat sheet:
Maven
- dep – Inserts <dependency/>
- pl – Inserts <plugin/>
- repo – Inserts <repo/>
Iterations
- fori – creates iteration loop
- itar – iterates elements of array
- itco – iterates elements of java.util.Collection
- iter – iterates Iterable
- itit – iterates java.util.Iterator
- itli – iterates elements of java.util.List
Other
- ifn – Inserts “if null” statement
- inn – Inserts “if not null” statement
- inst – Checks object type with instanceof and down-casts it
- lazy – Performs lazy initialization
Plain
- psf – public static final
- psfi – public static final int
- psfs – public static final String
- thr – throw new
Summary
Using predefined Java templates is just a beginning. You can find ready to use templates for particular frameworks on Github and I really encourage you to create your custom, project specific ones.
If you created interesting common use live templates for Java or related frameworks feel invited to post them in comments.
I very often use this template:
private static final org.slf4j.Logger LOG = org.slf4j.LoggerFactory.getLogger($CLASS_NAME$.class);
Hey Maciej Walkowiak ,
that’s look cool and easy to code with it.
can you provide me git hub link for this script. i want to use it in android studio .
Hey Wasim,
what script exactly you mean? Live templates are built in feature to Intellij IDEA – you don’t need any script to use it.
Thanks for sharing , very useful :)
all are available in eclipse :-)
That’s right. There are some other things available in eclipse. In former times there was “JBuilder”…