Overview

Live Templates are customizable rules that allow developers to abbreviate repetitive patterns of text in the editor. When a user types the designated abbreviation followed by a configurable expansion key (usually Tab), the IDE transforms the preceding input sequence to its full-length output, and update the cursor position.

For example, consider a for loop. Typically, the end user would need to type for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {<Enter><Tab><Enter><Enter>}<Up>. This pattern may be shortened to fori<Tab> and the remaining contents will be expanded, leaving the following structure:

for (int i = [|]; i < []; i++) {
    []
}

As the user completes each section of the for loop and presses Tab, the cursor advances to the next position in the editor. For more information about creating Custom Live Templates, refer to the corresponding documentation.

These sections describe how to add Live Templates, and their associated building blocks, to plugins. * Adding Live Templates to a Plugin * Creating New Functions for Live Templates * Surround Templates