Question

Having spent a number of years working primarily with MS SQL Server (and hence SQL Server Management Studio for common tasks), I am now beginning to work with MySql. To date I have been using MySQL Workbench and am generally happy with it.

I would, however, like to be able to assign custom keyboard shortcuts for certain commands (e.g. commands from this list). For example, I’d prefer to stick to the MS-SQL approach of ‘F5’ to execute queries, rather than hitting ‘Modifier+Return’. I haven’t yet come across a simple way to do this. My questions are then:

• Is this possible somehow in MySQL Workbench (e.g. additional plugin)?
• If not, do any of the alternatives to MySQL Workbench offer this functionality?

Environment:

• Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, 32 bit
• MySQL server version 5.5.24-0ubuntu0.12.04.1
• MySQL Workbench Version 5.2.38, rev 8753

Cheers!

Answer 1

You can modify the main_menu.xml file (for me on Ubuntu 12.04 this was in /usr/share/mysql-workbench/data/). After you modify it, you’ll need to restart MySQL Workbench.

It’ll look like this

    <value type="object" struct-name="app.MenuItem" id="com.mysql.wb.menu.query.exec"> 
      <link type="object" key="owner" struct-name="app.MenuItem">com.mysql.wb.menu.query</link> 
      <value type="string" key="caption">Execute (All or Selection)</value> 
      <value type="string" key="name">query.execute</value> 
      <value type="string" key="command">builtin:query.execute</value> 
      <value type="string" key="itemType">action</value> 
      <value type="string" key="shortcut">Modifier+E</value>
    </value>

The second to last line (Modifier+E) was edited by me. Previously it said “Modifier+Shift+Return”. Note that this is NOT an alias (you cannot have both).