Best Eclipse plugin

http://www.eclipse.org/Xtext/index.html for any script or build language. This eclispe plugin helps lot.

Why use getters and setters?

• Encapsulation of behavior associated with getting or setting the property - this allows additional functionality (like validation) to be added more easily later.
• Hiding the internal representation of the property while exposing a property using an alternative representation.
• Insulating your public interface from change - allowing the public interface to remain constant while the implementation changes without affecting existing consumers.
• Controlling the lifetime and memory management (disposal) semantics of the property - particularly important in non-managed memory environments (like C++ or Objective-C).
• Providing a debugging interception point for when a property changes at runtime - debugging when and where a property changed to a particular value can be quite difficult without this in some languages.
• Improved interoperability with libraries that are designed to operate against property getter/setters - Mocking, Serialization, and WPF come to mind.
• Allowing inheritors to change the semantics of how the property behaves and is exposed by overriding the getter/setter methods.
• Allowing the getter/setter to be passed around as lambda expressions rather than values.
• Getters and setters can allow different access levels - for example the get may be public, but the set could be protected.

For example, if foo was public, I could easily set it to null and then someone else could try to call a method on the object. But it's not there anymore! With a setFoo method, I could ensure that foo was never set to null.

Accessors and mutators also allow for encapsulation - if you aren't supposed to see the value once its set (perhaps it's set in the constructor and then used by methods, but never supposed to be changed), it will never been seen by anyone. But if you can allow other classes to see or change it, you can provide the proper accessor and/or mutator.

How to generate UML Diagrams from Java code in Eclipse

UML diagrams compliment inline documentation ( javadoc ) and allow to better explore / understand a design. Moreover, you can print and bring them to table to discuss a design.

In this post, we will install and use the ObjectAid plugin for Eclipse to produce jUnit lib class diagrams. Then, we will be able to generate UML diagrams by simply dragging and dropping classes into the editor. We can further manipulate the diagram by selecting which references, operations or attributes to display.

Open Eclipse and go to Help > Install New Software
Click on add to add a new repository
Enter name ObjectAid UML Explorer
Enter Location http://www.objectaid.net/update

How to change eclipse background Theme

Installation

If you are on Eclipse 3.6 (Helios), the easiest way to install the plugin is from the Eclipse Marketplace. Go to Help→Eclipse Marketplace..., then search for Eclipse Color Theme and install it.

If you are on Eclipse 3.5 (Galileo), go to Help→Install New Software..., press Add Site and enterEclipse Color Theme as the name and http://eclipse-color-theme.github.com/update as the URL. Then select the new entry from the select box labeled Work with, mark Eclipse Color Theme for installation and proceed.

Please note: If you are using a version of the plugin lower than 0.6, please uninstall and reinstall it following the instructions above. Update site and plugin ID have changed.

Usage

After the installation, go to Window→Preferences→General→Appereance→Color Theme to change the color theme.

If you have a feature request, create an issue or a pull request on GitHub.