Groovy/Groovy++ object creation
Groovy‘s as keyword allows for some interesting features. In particular, it provides a convenient syntactic sugar for object creation:
Point point = [4, 2] as Point
KeyAdapter listener = [
keyTyped: { e -> … },
keyReleased: { e -> … }
] as KeyAdapter
Still in development, but already quite usable, there is Groovy++: a library which adds static typing, performance and much more to Groovy language. One thing you get addicted to quite soon is that you don’t have to write as in the cases above anymore. If the compiler can statically figure out the expected type, it will insert all the necessary casts for you. This works, for example, for variable declarations, method return types and even method calls. So, if you have
JComponent comp = …
you can then write
if (comp.contains([x:2, y:4])) { … }
Cool, isn’t it? But why am I writing about all this in IntelliJ IDEA blog? Well, just to boast. Unusual syntax is not a reason for not helping you in coding, right? So, now the converted list/map literals will be shown if you search for the constructor usages in IntelliJ IDEA:
And the syntax highlighting on the brackets will help you distinguish between plain list/map literals and the ones that serve for object creation:
Finally, you can easily navigate to the constructor called via a literal. Just place your caret before the opening bracket and go to the declaration (e.g. press Ctrl+B)!
All this will be available in the next IntelliJ IDEA X EAP.
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