The bpm’online built-in code editor is an in-browser editor, which is never exactly ideal, but it does the job. However, there’s some things you can take advantage of to get the most out of your experience using the editor.
The first thing that will help your experience is knowing that the bpm’online editor uses the Ace editor, which is an open source Javascript editor (which was developed for the Cloud9 online IDE, now a part of Amazon/AWS). This can help because a lot of information about Ace will all apply to the bpm’online code editor.
For example, you might not be aware of the hotkeys available for the editor. Things like Find, Replace, and more are necessary for a good experience when writing code. For example:
| Windows/Linux | Mac | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Ctrl-F | Command-F | Find |
| Ctrl-H | Command-Option-F | Replace |
| Ctrl-K | Command-G | Find next |
| Ctrl-Shift-K | Command-Shift-G | Find previous |
There are far more shortcuts available. You can see the entire list at the Ace editor repo on GitHub.
One of my favorite shortcuts that is excellent when working with bpm’online is CTRL+SHIFT+P, which will select everything up to the matching corresponding bracket. When working with elements in the diff especially, this is a huge time saver. Here’s a image showing CTRL+SHIFT+P in action:
Here’s a list of a few more of my favorite hotkeys that work great with the bpm’online editor:
| Windows/Linux | Mac | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Ctrl-D | Command-D | Remove line |
| Ctrl-L | Command-L | Go to line |
| Ctrl-Shift-P | — | Select to matching bracket |
| Alt-L, Ctrl-F1 | Command-Option-L, Command-F1 | Fold selection |
| Alt-Shift-L, Ctrl-Shift-F1 | Command-Option-Shift-L, Command-Shift-F1 | Unfold |
| Ctrl-Shift-U | Ctrl-Shift-U | Change to lower case |
| Ctrl-U | Ctrl-U | Change to upper case |
Lastly, don’t forget about code folding. Code folding is built-in to the Ace editor (and bpm’online editor). Bpm’online schemas can be overwhelming to look at. There’s so many sections, attributes, mixins, details, diff, methods, etc. You can use code folding to get the other sections out of your way by just clicking the arrow keys in the gutter near the line numbers (there’s also hotkeys for folding/unfolding sections too). Take a look at code folding in action.
At some point, I’ll do an article on creating a local install of bpm’online so you can work in the file system and use other editors such as Code, Atom, & Visual Studio. However, knowing more about what is available in the web-based editor in bpm’online will make the experience using it much better.
