Live templates

Last modified: 08 September 2023

Expand a live template:

Configure: Settings | Editor | Live Templates

Use live templates to insert common constructs into your code, such as statements or definitions of database objects.

The following video shows how you can use live templates.

note

In the video, the DataGrip user interface is Classic UI. Starting from version 2023.1, the New UI is available. For more information about the New UI, refer to the corresponding topic.

To expand a code snippet, type the corresponding template abbreviation and press . Keep pressing to jump from one variable in the template to the next one. Press to move to the previous variable.

https://resources.jetbrains.com.cn/help/img/idea/2023.2/db_sql_live_templates.png
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Types of live templates

The following types of live templates are distinguished:

  • Simple templates contain only fixed plain text. When you expand a simple template, the text is automatically inserted into your source code, replacing the abbreviation.

    Abbreviation

    Expands to

    tab

    CREATE TABLE new_table
(
col INT NOT NULL
);

    col

    col int not null

  • Parameterized templates contain variables that enable user input. When you expand a parameterized template, variables are either replaced by input fields for the user to specify manually, or calculated by DataGrip automatically.

    Abbreviation

    Expands to

    ins

    INSERT INTO ... (...)
VALUES (...);

    sel

    SELECT *
FROM ...;

    selc

    SELECT count(*)
FROM ... alias
WHERE alias. ...;

    selw

    SELECT *
FROM ... alias
WHERE alias. ...;

    upd

    UPDATE ...
SET ... = ...
WHERE ...;

  • Surround templates wrap a block of the selected code with the text specified by the user.

Postfix code completion is similar to live templates. It transforms the current expression without selecting it. For example, you can type .cfrom after an expression to invoke the corresponding postfix completion and expand the SELECT statement to SELECT <all_column_names_from_table> FROM <table>.

Configure live templates

To configure live templates, open the Editor | Live Templates page of the IDE settings . On the Live Templates page, you can see all the available live templates, edit them and create new templates.

Templates are grouped according to the context where they can be used (usually, by the corresponding language). To move a template to another group, right-click the template, select Move, and then select the necessary group name.

Set an SQL dialect for a live template

You can select a specific dialect for a live template. For example, if you want the upd template to work only in MySQL and not in Db2.

  1. In Settings , navigate to Editor | Live Templates.

  2. Expand the SQL tree.

  3. Right-click the template you want to modify and select Change context.

  4. In the Change Context Type for Selected Templates window, expand the SQL tree node and select the context.

    Set an SQL dialect for a live template

note

If you set a dialect for a live template, this live template will work only in this dialect.

Each live template is defined by an abbreviation containing alphanumeric characters, dots, and hyphens. The abbreviation must be unique within a group, but the same abbreviation may be used in different groups and expand to different constructs according to the context of the corresponding group. Abbreviations of modified default templates are shown in the list with blue font.

Live template settings

To configure live templates, open Settings (), go to the Editor | Live Templates page. On this page, you can see all the available live templates grouped by language or framework. To configure a template, expand the desired group (for example, Ruby) and select a template.