Netbeans Java Editor

By Geertjan Wielenga and Patrick Keegan

About Netbeans IDE

The NetBeans IDE has seen adoption snowballing over the past years and now comes to you with deep Java EE 6 support in NetBeans IDE 6.8. You’ll find this reference card helpful if you want to get as much out of the Java editor (and related tools) as its authors intended when creating it. It lists all the keyboard shortcuts in carefully thought out categories and it provides a thorough exposition of optimal handling of Java code in the editor, covering viewing, navigation, source handling, and refactoring. Go to http://www.netbeans.org/downloads/ to get NetBeans IDE.

Java Editor Overview

What's New For Java In Netbeans IDE 6.8

The following features are new in NetBeans IDE 6.8 and can be of particular use to you in the context of creating Java-based applications:

Netbeans IDE Java Quick Start Tutorial

This tutorial provides a very simple and quick introduction to the NetBeans IDE workflow by walking you through the creation of a simple “Hello World” Java console application.

1. Start NetBeans IDE. In the IDE, choose File > New Project (Ctrl-Shift-N).
2. In the New Project wizard, expand the Java category and select Java Application. Then click Next.
3. In the Name and Location page of the wizard, type "HelloWorld" in Project Name. Then click Finish.
4. Because you have left the Create Main Class checkbox selected in the New Project wizard, the IDE has created a skeleton class for you. You can add the "Hello World!" message to the skeleton code by replacing the line:

   // TODO code application logic here
   with the line:
   System.out.println("Hello World!");

5. From the IDE’s menu bar, choose Run > Run Main Project (F6). The Output window should show you the "Hello World!" message.

Keyboard Shortcuts And Code Templates

Finding, Searching, and Replacing

Opening and Toggling Between Views

Navigating through Source Code

Compiling, Testing, and Running

Debugging

Coding In Java

Refactoring

This table provides short descriptions of the refactoring operations that are available in the IDE, mostly from under the Refactoring menu and within the Java editor itself, when you right-click within it.

When typing in the Source Editor, you can generate the text in the right-column of the following list by typing the abbreviation that is listed in the left-column and then pressing Tab.

Java Editor Code Templates

JSP Code Templates

Mac OS Keyboard Shortcuts

In most cases, working with the IDE on the Mac is no different from working on other operating systems. Two significant differences do exist, however. Firstly, the Options window on the Mac is found under NetBeans > Preferences. Secondly, the About box is under NetBeans > About.

Scrolling and Selecting

Code Folding

Cutting, Copying, Pasting, and Deleting Text

To Change Default Settings:

1. Choose Tools > Options from the main menu.
2. For code templates, select Editor and click the Code Templates tab. Here you can also change the expansion key, from Tab to something ese.
3. For keyboard shortcuts, select Keymap and choose a profile from the Profile drop-down list.

10 Handy Editor Shortcuts

1. Move/copy up/down. Press Ctrl-Shift-Up and the current selection is copied to the lines right above the current selection. Press Alt instead of Ctrl and it is moved instead of copied. Press Down instead of Up and the lines of code will be copied below the current selection, as below:

   

2. Capture inner/outer syntactic element. Each time you press Alt-Shift-Period, the selection expands to a successively wider syntactic element.

   For example, below one statement was selected, the key combination Alt-Shift-Period was pressed, and then the complete content of the surrounding block statement was shown to be selected.

   The selection expands from the current statement to sur rounding block statements to the surrounding method and, from there, to the surrounding class and further. To successively narrow the selection, press Alt-Shift-Comma, instead of Alt-Shift-Period

   

3. Generate code skeletons. Whenever you want to generate commonly needed pieces of code, such as constructors, getters, and setters, simply click Alt-Insert, and a small popup appears with a list of items from which you can select: 10 Handy Editor Shortcuts in NetBeans IDE 6.0 as constructors, getters, and setters, simply

   

4. Inplace rename. If you want to change a variable, method, or other item, of which more than one are used in your code, press Ctrl-R, and you will see that all instances of the item turn blue at the same time, as shown below. Now, when you change the selected item, all the other instances change at the same time, until you press Escape, at which point the inplace rename mode comes to an end.

   

5. Add/Remove comment lines. Select one or more lines, press Ctrl-/ and then the selected lines are commented out, as shown below. Press the same keys again and the commented lines will no longer be commented.

   

6. Inspect members/hierarchy. Both the members of the current class as well as its hierarchy can be displayed and then filtered. Press Alt-F12 and the ancestors of the current file are shown. On the other hand, if you press Ctrl-F12, the current file’s members are displayed, as shown here:

   

   

   Source URL: http://netbeans.dzone.com/news/10-handy-editor-shortcuts-netbeans-ide-60

7. Switch between documents. When you have multiple documents open at the same time, press Ctrl and Tab, and then a small popup appears. You can scroll through the popup, which displays all the open documents, and then choose the document that you want to open:

   

8. Jump to last edit. Often, you find yourself in a situation where you have edited in one document, while you currently find yourself in a completely different document. How do you get back to the place where you were last editing your code? That is likely to be the place where you want to get back to, in order to do some more editing. Now, whenever you click Ctrl-Q, the last edited document is found, and the cursor lands on the line where the last edit took place. Alternatively, you can click the button shown below, in the top left corner of the Source Editor:

   

9. Bookmarks. When you press Ctrl-Shift-M, the current line is “bookmarked”. What this means is that you can later quickly cycle back/forward to it (with Ctrl-Shift-Period and Ctrl-Shift-Comma). The bookmarked line gets a small icon in the left sidebar, as shown below, until you press Ctrl-Shift-M on the line again, to remove the bookmark:

   

10. Highlight exit points. Place the cursor on the return type and you will immediately see all exit points highlighted:

    

Quick Options Window Overview

Resources

Thanks to the following people who kindly gave of their time and expertise in reviewing this refcard: Adam Bien, Tonny Kohar, Varun Nischal, Kristian Rink, and Tom Wheeler.

Geertjan Wielenga

Geertjan Wielenga is the NetBeans technical writer responsible for documentation related to the NetBeans Java editor. He is co-author of the book Rich Client Programming: Plugging into the NetBeans Platform. He is known for his popular blog at http://blogs.sun.com/geertjan, as well as for his role as a Zone Leader at Javalobby.

Patrick Keegan

Patrick Keegan has been writing about the NetBeans IDE for over 9 years. In addition to writing help and tutorials, he is co-author of the NetBeans IDE Field Guide and has contributed to other books on NetBeans and Java.

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