JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA Blog

Recently, we’ve added a number of new refactorings for Android XML layout files. All the refactorings can be used right in the editor, in the UI designer (from “Design” panel or “Component Tree”) or can be invoked from the Structure View.

So, here’s what we’ve prepared for you:

• Extract Style. Styles in Android is an analogue of cascading stylesheets in web design — they allow you to separate the design from the content. With this new refactoring you can create a new style from a layout XML tag. To perform refactoring just place the caret into an XML tag and choose Refactor | Extract | Style… from a popup menu in XML editor or Refactor | Extract Style… in the UI designer.   Moreover, it is possible to extract parent style from an existing style declaration.

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Working on an XML document, for having additional code assistance such as error highlighting or completion, you need to specify an XML schema (e.g. XSD or DTD). In the previous versions of IntelliJ IDEA, you had to work with Schemas and DTDs section in Settings or fetch schema from external resource with help of Fetch External Resource intention.

IntelliJ IDEA 12 Leda introduces new way to configure schema for your XML file, based on detecting schemas located locally in project sources or libraries. The IDE tries to match schema by information available in the document, including namespace, system id, etc. If auto-detection fails for some reason, you can adjust the schema with Manually Setup External Resources intention.

This action shows the dialog with a list of all schemas found in your project.

Now you don’t need to browse folders and jars to find schema manually.

You can try this feature now in IntelliJ IDEA 12 EAP.
Please feel free to give us feedback in comments here or submit bug reports in our issue tracker.

Develop with Pleasure!

How often do you write XML configurations like that above? How many keystrokes does it take?

This one is written in just moments, with the help of the new completion features coming in IntelliJ IDEA 10. First of all, the IDE completes all required subtags for you, even nested ones. Second, you can use smart completion feature to ensure that the tags you write are in order described in your XML schema.

If you do not know where your new tag should be inserted, invoke the Generate / XML Tag action from context menu, choose the tag you want, and IntelliJ IDEA will generate a completely valid XML structure and insert it in the right place of the document.

Download the latest IntelliJ IDEA EAP build and try this in the next XML file you open.

New IntelliJ IDEA 10 EAP build is ready for your testing.

Some noteworthy changes are:

• Improved completion in XML. Smart completion plus new Generate / XML Tag action from context menu.
• New GitHub integration. Try looking under ‘Checkout from VCS’ action.
• In-place introduce variable. Refactor you Java code with no popups.
• Many other fixes and improvements since the last update.

Download the build and enjoy!

Happy Halloween!

There are few small, but very useful improvements in XML editing will be available in IntelliJ IDEA 10. All of them are very handy when edit XML files like schemes, JSPs, MXMLs, etc. First of these improvements is inspection detecting unused namespace declarations.

Others include namespace prefix intentions which allow you to rename, remove or introduce namespace prefixes. Want to make you schema file lighter? Not a problem:

Rename in place:

Or introduce new namespace prefix:

Find usages works as well. Enjoy them in first IntelliJ IDEA X EAP soon.

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.