XPathView Plugin: Boosting XSL and XML Development
August 10th, 2006 by Egor MalyshevIntelliJ IDEA features excellent support for XML development. Smart editor with code completion, error highlighting and other productivity aimed features help create efficient code. However, there is no limit in perfecting the development environment.
XPathView plugin extends IntelliJ IDEA XML and XSL support by providing for:
- Instant XPath evaluation
Get the fully qualified XPath expression that identifies certain XML document node. Use it in your application to refer to that node, or create an XSL base stylesheet.

The plugin also lets you evaluate XPath queries and examine what results they produce. You can define the context and scope for your queries to make XSL scripts debugging yet more productive. - XSL aware completion and highlighting
XPathView extends IntelliJ IDEA completion and error highlighting to make XML development even more productive.
XPathView is aware of all functions, variables and other entities defined within an XSL stylesheet…

….and of parameters defined for specific templates.

The plugin recognizes XSL specific errors, like missing function parameters, unresolved references, incorrect expression and XPathView syntax and more.

- XSL aware refactorings
XPathView provides for refactoring of template, function, parameter and variable names. Inline and introduce refactorings let flexibly manage XSL code and replace expressions with variables and vice versa.

- XSL aware intention actions
XPathView features intentions for transforming XSL code. For example, converting xsl:if into xsl:choose

- XSL debugging run configurations
Plugin supports creating run configurations through the standard IntelliJ IDEA settings dialog. You can use it to test and debug your XSL scripts, verify stylesheet output, etc. just like you would do that with an ordinary application. Plugin lets pass specific parameters to scripts at runtime and supports for multiple output formats, including IntelliJ IDEA console and user defined files.
For more detailed information about XPathView and complete feature list, visit its home page
XPathView is freeware and available for installation through IntelliJ IDEA Plugin manager.
You can also dowload it from IntelliJ Plugin Repository
August 10th, 2006 at 10:04 am
Does this plugin work with 6.0?
August 12th, 2006 at 11:27 am
this pages seems more up to date
http://plugins.intellij.net/plugin/?id=237
August 14th, 2006 at 1:07 am
Currently, the plugin currently does not support the Beta (nor any EAP) release due to the massive amount of API changes.
The plugin will support IntelliJ IDEA 6.0 after its official release in the mid of fall, 2006.
August 14th, 2006 at 4:36 am
Thibaut, this is exactly the page where you are going if you click the IntelliJ Plugin Repository link from the article.
August 14th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
right Egor, I only checked the “Home Page” link, sorry
September 19th, 2006 at 3:10 am
I am glad to inform anyone who might me interested in the subject that the IntelliJ IDEA 6.0 compatible version of the XPathView plugin is now available.
You can install it through the Plugin Manager, or using the above mentioned links.
December 4th, 2006 at 2:52 am
Is it just me? Editing xsl files in IntelliJ 6.0 with XPathView installed continuously stalls the editor for a few seconds while working. Suffice is to say that I had to switch back to IntelliJ 5.1.2 + XPathView 1.4.1 to keep working. Has anyone else observed the same behaviour? Any ideas as to what might be wrong here?
December 14th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
@zmeeagain, I’m experiencing this as well. IntelliJ 6.0 is constantly throwing errors and the CPU spikes to 90-99 all the time when I have just 1 xsl file open in the IDE.
I installed 6.0.2 and it seems and it doesn’t seem any better.
December 14th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
http://plugins.intellij.net/plugin/?id=237
I updated to 2.0 b3 and it seems better now.