Sometimes I miss the laziness of using an IDE that let me just write the attribute of a Java class and then let the IDE generate the required getter/setter.
Can Emacs do this?
Currently I just copy paste a pair of getter/setter form the previous line, and then copy paste and modify it. It's simple, but yet, make coding a little bit funnier :)
You asked specifically about generating a getter/setter pair. And you can write elisp to do this. But it may be interesting to look into a more general solution.
To solve this generally, I use ya-snippet . The name refers to "Yet Another Snippet package", so you can be sure the problem has been solved before. But I found ya-snippet to be the most useful, simple, and capable solution, for my needs.
For a property with a getter/setter, I type
prop<TAB>
...and I get a template that I can then fill in, like a form. I specify the name of the property, and everything else is generated. Very nice, easy.
This works for any micro-pattern you commonly use in code. I have snippets for a singleton, constructor, for loops, switch statements, try/catch, and so on.
The key with ya-snippet is there is no elisp code to write. Basically I just provide the text for the template, and it works. This is the ya-snippet code for the getter/setter snippet you see above:
# name : getter/setter property ... { ... }
# key: prop
# --
private ${1:Type} _${2:Name};
public ${1:Type} get$2 {
${3://get impl}
}
public void set$2($1 value) {
${4://set impl}
}
Everything above the "# --" is metadata for the snip. The "key" is the most important bit of that metadata - it is the short sequence that can be expanded. The name is shown on the yasnippet menu. The stuff below the # -- line is the expansion code. It includes several fill-in fields.
YAsnippet works for any programming mode in emacs (java, php, c#, python, etc) and it works for other text modes too.
I'm using yasnippet as well, but this is a better snippet, imho:
# -*- mode: snippet -*-
# name: property
# key: r
# --
private ${1:T} ${2:value};
public $1 get${2:$(capitalize text)}() { return $2; }
public void set${2:$(capitalize text)}($1 $2) { this.$2 = $2; }
$0
This code, for instance is generated in 10 keystrokes (r, C-o, Long, C-o, id, C-o):
private Long id;
public Long getId() { return id; }
public void setId(Long id) { this.id = id; }
I recommend binding yas/expand to C-o and not TAB to avoid clashes with
e.g. auto-complete.
I have this setup:
(global-set-key "\C-o" 'open-line-or-yas)
(defun open-line-or-yas ()
(interactive)
(cond ((and (looking-back " ") (looking-at "[\s\n}]+"))
(insert "\n\n")
(indent-according-to-mode)
(previous-line)
(indent-according-to-mode))
((expand-abbrev))
(t
(setq *yas-invokation-point* (point))
(yas/next-field-or-maybe-expand-1))))
(defun yas/next-field-or-maybe-expand-1 ()
(interactive)
(let ((yas/fallback-behavior 'return-nil))
(unless (yas/expand)
(yas/next-field))))
Note (expand-abbrev) somewhere inside this code. It allows me to expand e.g. bis to BufferedInputStream when I define:
(define-abbrev-table 'java-mode-abbrev-table
'(
("bb" "ByteBuffer" nil 1)
("bis" "BufferedInputStream" nil 1)
%...
))
If you use the java-mode YASnippets by nekop you get the snippet prop which lets you define a private variable and it automatically makes a getter and a setter for that variable. The snippet reads as follows:
# -*- mode: snippet -*-
# name: property
# key: prop
# --
private ${1:String} ${2:name};$0
public $1 get${2:$(upcase-initials text)}() {
return $2;
}
public void set${2:$(upcase-initials text)}($1 $2) {
this.$2 = $2;
}
As can be seen this snippet does not differ much from the other answers except that it may be better formatted. Another advantage is that it is part of a package of snippets for Java.
This site shows with elisp that can be pasted into your .emacs, how to generate getter and setter methods.
JDEE has the capability along with a lots more built in to itself.
