Eclipse: Fulltext autocompletion for Java?

Question

can I has fulltext autocompletion for Java @ Eclipse? Let's demonstrate:

Final piece of code:

getVariants().add(new Variant(MediaType.TEXT_XML));

How do I code now:

getv[ctrl+space].a[Enter]new V[ctrl+space, down arrow, Enter]M[Ctrl+Space, Enter].text_x

Basically, Eclipse completes word "TEXT_XML" when I provide letters "TEXT_X".

How would I like to code:

getv[ctrl+space].a[Enter]new V[ctrl+space, down arrow, Enter]M[Ctrl+Space, Enter].xml

and Eclipse should realise I meant "TEXT_XML" (fulltext autocompletion).

Answer 1

As far as I'm aware, there is no way of enabling a full-text code completion in the Eclipse preferences view. This has been bugging me for a while, too. I did quite a bit of digging and I'm pretty certain there is no easy way of achieving this.

However, there are two ways of implementing the desired, but I assume both of which are way to much work for fixing this little nuisance.

1. There is an Eclipse plug-in extension point for the JDT Java Completion Proposal Computer - reference page A sample project which implements this extension point can be found in this repository. This is fairly convenient, but still a lot of boilerplate and tedious coding.

2. You can change the findKeywords method in the internal org.eclipse.jdt.internal.codeassist.CompletionEngine class and compile your own JDT fork. But this is discouraged for so many reasons. First of all, this class is a 12000 line monster and hard to just jump in. And of course, if you'd only hack a kludge in, there is little chance of this becoming an official contribution, so you'd need to worry about every eclipse release.

Additionally, there might be a very chillaxed way in the future. Although this might exceed your requirements a bit.

Have a look at the Code Recommenders project. This blog has an outline of the project objectives It doesn't mention full-text auto-completion specifically, but I'd assume its matching algorithms go even beyond that.

Edit: In the proper SO-spirit, I'll keep this answer up to date:

Apparently the feature is now implemented in the Code Recommenders plug-in. See this blog post and this forum thread. I'm quite surprised it only took 10 locs. To me the extension point appeared more complex.

Answer 2

If your MediaType class does not contain a large number of accessible fields/methods you could simply use

getv[ctrl+space].a[Enter]new V[ctrl+space, down arrow, Enter]M[Ctrl+Space, Enter].[Ctrl+Space, down arrow, Enter]

you may need to press the down arrow more than once, though to select the desired field.