How to implement a 'generate getter/setter' for a Java Class in emacs?

Question

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

Answer 1

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

...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.