add Spring Data JPA Content Assist to STS 4

[ismailsalloo]

Has Spring Data JPA Content Assist been removed from STS 4? In version 3 I was able to use content assist to show what fields were allowed to be part of the name of the method when using Query Methods. Has it been removed / not added to STS4 or is it a bug or disabled by default?

[kdvolder]

Possibly, but I am not totally sure what you are exactly referring to. So, can you give a concrete example of something that used to work and now doesn't anymore? With "concrete", I mean with some code sample and a bit of explanation exactly what you expect to work.

We may consider trying to somehow 'rescue' the feature from the old code-base or re-implement it from scratch, but we need to know what you are actually talking about first. Oh, and thanks for the report, we rely on these reports to determine which parts of the old tooling people are really missing.

[thackel]

I can confirm that the Spring-Data JPA Content assist is not working anymore.

When editing JPA Repositories, STS is no longer providing completion for possible fields of the entity.

Here is the original feature ticket for older versions which describe the functionality: https://jira.spring.io/browse/IDE-1249

[ismailsalloo]

Possibly, but I am not totally sure what you are exactly referring to. So, can you give a concrete example of something that used to work and now doesn't anymore? With "concrete", I mean with some code sample and a bit of explanation exactly what you expect to work.

We may consider trying to somehow 'rescue' the feature from the old code-base or re-implement it from scratch, but we need to know what you are actually talking about first. Oh, and thanks for the report, we rely on these reports to determine which parts of the old tooling people are really missing.

I'm attaching screenshots of what code completion looks like in STS 3 vs STS 4 (specifically around JPA Query Methods)

STS 3:

STS 4:

[ismailsalloo]

I can confirm that the Spring-Data JPA Content assist is not working anymore.

When editing JPA Repositories, STS is no longer providing completion for possible fields of the entity.

Here is the original feature ticket for older versions which describe the functionality: https://jira.spring.io/browse/IDE-1249

This pretty much sums up what's missing :-)

[kdvolder]

Thanks for the reference and the screenshots. That helps to know what is being talked about here.

Now, I'm pretty sure we are not going to re-implement or 'rescue' all of that as it was before because it seems much of it was specific to beans defined by XML.

From the screenshots, am I correct in assuming you are really mostly interested in the content assist and validations in Java context? WE might be able to re-implement that, though I suspect it will have to be done mostly from scratch. (Not saying we won't do it, we might, but it could take some time as its not a trivial feature to re-implement).

[martinlippert]

This is indeed a feature of the Spring Data support in STS 3.9.x that we didn't re-implement for STS4 yet. This is due to the fact that the Spring support in STS4 is a complete re-write and we focused on specific pieces first (instead of "blindly" re-implementing everything from the old tooling). So this piece didn't make it into the first version of the all-new Spring Tools 4.

We should add this to the backlog in order to bring this content-assist for Spring Data repositories back - maybe in an even better shape than we had before... :-)

[ismailsalloo]

Thanks for the reference and the screenshots. That helps to know what is being talked about here.

Now, I'm pretty sure we are not going to re-implement or 'rescue' all of that as it was before because it seems much of it was specific to beans defined by XML.

From the screenshots, am I correct in assuming you are really mostly interested in the content assist and validations in Java context? WE might be able to re-implement that, though I suspect it will have to be done mostly from scratch. (Not saying we won't do it, we might, but it could take some time as its not a trivial feature to re-implement).

Yes, we mainly work within the Java context nowadays. Can't remember when last I defined a bean via XML :-)

[ismailsalloo]

This is indeed a feature of the Spring Data support in STS 3.9.x that we didn't re-implement for STS4 yet. This is due to the fact that the Spring support in STS4 is a complete re-write and we focused on specific pieces first (instead of "blindly" re-implementing everything from the old tooling). So this piece didn't make it into the first version of the all-new Spring Tools 4.

We should add this to the backlog in order to bring this content-assist for Spring Data repositories back - maybe in an even better shape than we had before... :-)

I'm pretty impressed with STS 4 at the moment. Looking forward to what's in store for the future

[martinlippert]

@ismailsalloo Anything specific you are looking for with regards to the Spring Data content-assist? Just the Spring Data query method completions? Or something else in addition to that?

[ismailsalloo]

@ismailsalloo Anything specific you are looking for with regards to the Spring Data content-assist? Just the Spring Data query method completions? Or something else in addition to that?

I mainly used it for query method completions. It would be cool if syntax within a @query annotation could also be validated.

[martinlippert]

@ismailsalloo What exactly do you mean with syntax validation within a @query annotation? Can you provide a few examples?

Since we try to stay away from validations to avoid annoying users with false warnings, I would like to understand this in more detail first.

[ismailsalloo]

@ismailsalloo What exactly do you mean with syntax validation within a @query annotation? Can you provide a few examples?

Since we try to stay away from validations to avoid annoying users with false warnings, I would like to understand this in more detail first.

@martinlippert, I understand the annoyance behind false validations. It also gets to me at times.

Basically my idea is not too much different from the query method suggestion. I was thinking of something to the effect where as you start typing your query within the @query annotation, based on your entity structure, STS provides the user with suggestions of what fields you can extract within your query as well as what fields you can use in your search criteria. In addition to that, if you have a number field within your search criteria, the method param that it maps to must be of type number. I know it's pie in the sky, but it would be super awesome to have that functionality in STS.

I hope I'm making sense

[martinlippert]

@ismailsalloo Thanks for the details, this content-assist support for the values in the annotation sounds indeed quite useful and like an awesome feature, thanks a lot for the suggestion. Will put that on the list of things to consider for future versions.

[ismailsalloo]

@ismailsalloo Thanks for the details, this content-assist support for the values in the annotation sounds indeed quite useful and like an awesome feature, thanks a lot for the suggestion. Will put that on the list of things to consider for future versions.

@martinlippert thanks for taking out time to respond to my query and possibly having it included in the future :-)