Top Ten Toys for Java Coders in 9.0.5
This is an ancient blog post originally published by Brian Duff on 11 August 2003 on Radio Weblogs, and rescued from the Wayback Machine. The images from the original post have unfortunately been lost to time…
Oracle JDeveloper 10G 9.0.5 preview is on its way, and includes plenty of new features will hopefully be appreciated by both RAD developers and code monkeys. I use JDeveloper as my main development environment and code editor when working on the product. This article lists ten of my favorite new features for the hardened Java hacker.
1. Semantic Underlining
Since 9.0.3, JDeveloper has provided syntactic underlining. If your Java code contained a syntax error such as a missing semicolon, a red underline indicated the offending code. In 9.0.5, semantic errors are also underlined. These are errors in the logic of your code that would prevent it from compiling, such as method calls that throw unhandled exceptions, or references to classes that haven’t been imported. Semantic errors are indicated by a blue underline (you can change this, of course, or turn this feature off completely if the underlines distract you from the important business of actually hacking code).
2. Import Assistance
I like to keep Java code compiling as much as possible, so when I use a class from a new package namespace, I want to add an import for it immediately. The downside of this is that it involves a lot of vertical jumping about in the code editor. In JDeveloper 9.0.4, I was using the import completion feature to work around this. In 9.0.4, if you enter a fully qualified package name, e.g. “javax.swing.” then pick the class name from the resulting insight popup list, an import is automatically added for the class.
The code editor in 9.0.5 goes one step further and tries to guess the import you need when it encounters an unrecognized class name. You can choose to ignore its suggestion, or press a hotkey (Alt+Enter by default) to automatically insert the suggested import statement.
3. Structure Window Sorting and Filtering
The structure window shows a list of classes, fields and methods defined by a java file open in the code editor. Sometimes, the sheer size of some of the classes I work with on a daily basis made the structure window less useful than it probably should have been. Probably time to do some refactoring, but in the meantime, JDeveloper 9.0.5 makes my life easier by letting me filter, sort and generally muck about with the items displayed in the structure window.
The toolbar buttons in the structure window provide the following filtering features:
Show Methods
Show Fields
Show Static Members
Show Public Members Only
4. Code Menu
A lot of functionality in the code editor was previously only available using shortcut keys. You could discover these features by going to Tools->Preferences and navigating to the Accelerators page. 9.0.5 makes it much easier to find coding features by adding a new Code menu when the editor is active. It’s also handy as a reminder of several of the accelerators.
5. Improved Javadoc Support
Support in general for Javadoc is much better in 9.0.5. One feature I like a lot is the automatic Javadoc insertion. If you type /** and press enter above any public method that doesn't already have Javadoc, a template Javadoc comment is automatically inserted complete with @param, @return, and @throws tags. You can also invoke this functionality from Code->Add Javadoc Comments.
When pressing F1 over a java identifier, JDeveloper has always displayed the relevant Javadoc page. However, the help window used to display the Javadoc was a separate top level window from JDeveloper, which made it hard to position the windows to look at your code and read the documentation at the same time. The new help system in JDeveloper 9.0.5 already makes this a more pleasant experience by providing an integrated help topic window you can position side by side with the code editor:
Better still, when you press Ctrl-D (or use the Code->Quick Javadoc menu) inside a method, field or class name, a popup appears containing appropriately scoped javadoc:
6. Field Insight for Java Classes
In dialogs where you need to type a class name (e.g. Search->Go to Java Class…), a new feature in JDeveloper 9.0.5 provides an insight list of available classes as you type. This is a great alternative to browsing the class hierarchy using a separate browse dialog.
7. Audit and Metrics
JDeveloper 9.0.5 has new tools for auditing and calculating metrics on your code. Of the two, I find audit most useful. It’s great for helping to keep code tidy, following coding standards, with complete and correct javadoc tags etc. There’s a large amount of audit functionality, including the ability to create profiles consisting of specific audit rules, the ability to define new rules via an extension API, utilities for automatically fixing audit violations, and command line support for running audit outside JDeveloper.
8. Surround With
Using the Code->Surround With… menu, you can easily insert several coding constructs.
It’s particularly handy for inserting try/catch blocks. It even automatically inserts any required import statements for exceptions caught in the catch clause.
9. Generate Accessors
Code->Generate Accessors… provides a quick way to create get…() and set…() methods based on existing fields of a class.
10. Log Window Color Coding & Hyperlinks
The log window in 9.0.5 now uses two different colors to distinguish stdout and stderr output. If an exception stack trace is dumped to stderr, hyperlinks are displayed in the log window making it easy to jump to the offending code.
Modern notes from Future Brian:
This blog post used to have images for each of the sections, and it’s probably a bit… uninteresting without them. Sorry :)
JDeveloper 9.0.5 was a big release of the product, and the core IDE team had spent a lot of time trying to focus on the needs of Java developers. It’s hard to think of anything other than Eclipse dominating the IDE landscape in the mid-2000s, but the team were quite determined to make this an excellent general purpose IDE, and break free of the legacy of it originally being a Borland JBuilder fork prior to the first 9.0 release. JDeveloper 9.0.5 was quite competitive in terms of feature set with contemporary Java IDEs. This would erode quite a bit in subsequent releases for various reasons.
