JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA Blog

Ruby plugin for IntelliJ IDEA was recently beefed up with several new features:

• Quick creating of controller actions with alt+insert
• Go to action from view template with gutter navigation icon
• Go to view template from action with gutter navigation icon
• Ruby and Rails Live Templates

See the Live Rails Demo that shows the latest features and improvements in action.

For more information about features, see the Ruby and Ruby on Rails Development page.

For latest plugin updates, release notes, discussions and bug tracking see the Ruby Plugin Home Page.

Our team has published the first implementation of Ruby plugin that turns IntelliJ IDEA into a decent IDE for developing Ruby and Ruby on Rails applications.

Despite it’s in beta stage as of yet, it has recevied very positive feedback from Marty Andrews, the professional Ruby developer.

The plugin feature highlights are very impressive as well:

• Dedicated Ruby and Rails modules with Ruby SDK support
• Dedicated Rails project view
• Basic code completion for Ruby keywords
• Automatic completion for Ruby statements
• Ruby syntax highlighting with braces matching
• Ruby code formatting and automatic code styling
• On-the-fly error checking and code validation
• Smart structure view for Ruby files
• Quick Ruby documentation (RDoc) view and lookup
• Dedicated run configuration for Ruby and Rails with support for scripts
• Intention actions to automatically create Ruby access modifiers and Rails skeletons and actions
• Support for Go to class, file and symbol for Ruby files
• Quick access to Rails generators and Rake tasks through context menus

So, stay tuned with the latest plugin updates that will include smart RHTML completion, extended syntax highlighting, quick fixes and more of other productivity-aimed enhancements.

I have created the Ruby development live demo that shows how to create a sample Ruby application with IntelliJ IDEA. You can watch it or download in archive.

For more information about features, see the Ruby and Ruby on Rails Development page.

For latest plugin updates, release notes, discussions and bug tracking see the Ruby Plugin Home Page.

As you might recall, IntelliLang plugin had won two awards at the recently held IntelliJ IDEAL Plugin Contest.

IntelliLang extends the support of custom languages and regular expressions in IntelliJ IDEA with:

• Language Injection Support: IntelliJ IDEA 6.0 can treat String literals, XML text and attributes as fragments of an arbitrary language. IntelliLang lets you use Java annotations or built-in GUI configurator to mark String fields, local variables, method parameters and methods returning Strings as containing code written in a certain language.
  
  
  
  With IntelliLang you get the proper code completion, highlighting and inspections according to the language you have annotated, for example, a JavaScript code embedded into an XSLT file.
  
  
• Pattern Validation: Supports annotations that let check String Java elements for compliance with certain regular expressions. This is really handy when it comes to ensuring that an expression conforms to a certain syntax, for example, a String is a legal Java identifier or a valid printf-like pattern used by java.util.Formatter.
  
  
• Regular Expression Support: Adds support for regular expressions to code completion, validation, inspection, quick-fixes and Intention Actions, plus error highlighting.
  
  
  
  Moreover, IntelliLang brings several unique features that make creating and editing regular expressions even easier: completion and validation for character property names (e.g. \p{javaJavaIdentifierStart}) combined with validation and navigation for the use of back-references (e.g. \1).
  
  
  

IntelliLang is freeware and available for download at IntelliJ IDEA Plugin Repository
Visit the IntelliLang Support Page for more information about plugin features and usage.

There are roughly three hundreds of various extensions in the IntelliJ IDEA plugin repository .
Plugins are grouped by about thirty different categories, which is very comfy and lets you easily find an extension that adds the functionality you personally need to your favorite IDE.
Today I want to tell you about the Key Promoter plugin which is filed under Fun Stuff category.
After taking a look at it I can say that sometime the fun stuff can be really useful. Whenever you are using your mouse to carry out an action through toolbar or menu, the plugin displays large animated tooltip telling you what keyboard shortcut could have been used instead.




As you might have already noticed, keyboard shortcuts greatly boost your productivity because you don’t have to draw your hands from keyboard both when you’re writing the code or making the use of various IDE functions.
With Key Promoter it takes much less time to learn all the frequently used keystroke combinations and so take your productivity to a whole new level.

Key Promoter plugin is freeware and available for download at IntelliJ IDEA Plugin Repository

Today, on September 1st we’re proud to announce the launch of the first ever IntelliJ IDEA Plugin Contest.
Anyone who ever wrote an IntelliJ IDEA plugin, or is just planning to start, can win cash and software prizes valued at over $25,000.
Be first to prove yourself worthy, hone you skills, enhance your favorite Java IDE, and become a few thousand dollars richer.
Read the IntelliJ IDEAL Plugin Contest offical page for detailed information about contest rules and requirements.
The contest officially ends October 31, 2006
Winners will be announced on December 11, 2006.

IntelliJ 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

Peter Gromov, one of IntelliJ IDEA developers, shares his knowledge about utilizing IntelliJ IDEA 6.0 XML DOM power in the field of plugin authoring.

Peter wrote the article that describes the key principles of working with XML data through this DOM and quickly outlines how it can be used to empower and simplify plugin development with the latest version of IntelliJ IDEA.

Read the full story

IntelliJ IDEA 6.0 is now avaliable as beta version. The complete release is scheduled to the mid of fall, 2006.

IntelliJ IDEA provides JUnit integration out of the box, but it does not mean that you cannot use other test frameworks. TestNG-J is a plugin that provides integration with the TestNG framework in a very similar way to the native IntelliJ IDEA integration with JUnit.
TestNG-J adds its own type of run/debug configuration that allows for running tests. It also displays testing results and highlights failed and passed tests. To learn more about plugin features and configuration, take a look at the plugin overivew.
The plugin is free and can be downloaded and installed using IntelliJ IDEA Plugin Manager. The plugin is available for both IntelliJ IDEA 5.x and EAP versions of IntelliJ IDEA 6.0.

Of course, tabs is a good way for organizing opened files within an application. However, when you have too many opened tabs it becomes difficult to navigate between them. IntelliJ IDEA helps you to navigate between recently opened files (CTRL + E), but sometimes you need to switch only between the tabs.
The TabSwitch plugin allows you to switch between IntelliJ IDEA tabs like you switch between opened applications in Windows. With the plugin installed, just press Alt + A, and you’ll get the list of the opened tabs. The most recently used tabs come first.



As it turned out, Alt + A is not an intuitive shortcut. So, many developers changed it to Ctrl + Tab. This shortcut is used in IntelliJ IDEA for switching within splitted windows. But it is rarely used, so you can easily override it.
To change the shortcut, open Settings - > Keymap. Then select Plugins->TabSwitch, and configure its shortcuts (remember that you cannot modify the default keymap and need to create your own).



The plugin has more features and shortucts that help you with tab navigation. Here you can find the full description: http://www.intellij.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/TabSwitchPlugin

The TabSwitch is free and can be downloaded via IntelliJ IDEA Plugin Manager.

“Simple Syntax Highlighting” plugin for generic syntax highlighting was recently developed by one of the IntelliJ IDEA enthusiasts. The plugin uses simple configuration files to add syntax highlighting for such programming languages as Python and, of course, Ruby.
The plugin is free and can be downloaded via IntelliJ IDEA Plugin Manager. You can read more about this plugin at its web site (http://idea-simsyn.tigris.org/) or in IntelliJ IDEA Plugin Repository.
There is already some feedback from plugin users:

• IntelliJ Ruby Syntax Highlighting Plugin from Jay Fields
• Even Better Random Times for Rails from Obie Fernandez where he uses IntelliJ IDEA with the Simple Syntax Highlighting plugin for random date generation