org.intellij.lang.annotations

Annotation Type Language

@Documented
 @Retention(value=CLASS)
 @Target(value={METHOD,FIELD,PARAMETER,LOCAL_VARIABLE,ANNOTATION_TYPE})
public @interface Language

Specifies that an element of the program represents a string that is a source code on a specified language. Code editors may use this annotation to enable syntax highlighting, code completion and other features inside the literals that assigned to the annotated variables, passed as arguments to the annotated parameters, or returned from the annotated methods.

This annotation also could be used as a meta-annotation, to define derived annotations for convenience. E.g. the following annotation could be defined to annotate the strings that represent Java methods:

   @Language(value = "JAVA", prefix = "class X{", suffix = "}")
   @interface JavaMethod {}
 

Note that using the derived annotation as meta-annotation is not supported. Meta-annotation works only one level deep.

Required Element Summary

Required Elements

Modifier and Type	Required Element and Description
@NonNls java.lang.String	value Language name like "JAVA", "HTML", "XML", "RegExp", etc.

Optional Element Summary

Optional Elements

Modifier and Type	Optional Element and Description
@NonNls java.lang.String	prefix A constant prefix that is assumed to be implicitly added before the literal.
@NonNls java.lang.String	suffix A constant suffix that is assumed to be implicitly added after the literal.

Element Detail

value

@NonNls
public abstract @NonNls java.lang.String value

Language name like "JAVA", "HTML", "XML", "RegExp", etc. The complete list of supported languages is not specified. However, at least the following languages should be recognized:

• "JAVA" - Java programming language
• "HTML" - HTML
• "XML" - XML
• "RegExp" - Regular expression supported by Java Pattern

prefix

@NonNls
public abstract @NonNls java.lang.String prefix

A constant prefix that is assumed to be implicitly added before the literal. This helps to apply proper highlighting when the program element represents only a part of the valid program. E.g. if the method parameter accepts a Java method, it could be annotated as void methodProcessor(@Language(value="JAVA", prefix="class X {", suffix="}").

Default:

""

suffix

@NonNls
public abstract @NonNls java.lang.String suffix

A constant suffix that is assumed to be implicitly added after the literal. See prefix() for details.

Default:

""