Question

Java classes are generally divided into logical “blocks”. Is there a convention to mark these sections? Ideally, it would be supported by the major IDEs.

I personally use this method:

//// Section name here ////

However, some editors seem to have problems with this.

As an example, in Objective-C code you can use this method:

#pragma mark -
#pragma mark Section name here

This will result in a menu in XCode that looks like this:

Answer 1

I personally use 80-chars line separators, like this :

public class Client {

    //================================================================================
    // Properties
    //================================================================================

    private String name;
    private boolean checked;

    //================================================================================
    // Constructors
    //================================================================================

    public Client() {
    }

    public Client(String name, boolean checked) {
        this.name = name;
        this.checked = checked;
    }

    //================================================================================
    // Accessors
    //================================================================================

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public boolean isChecked() {
        return checked;
    }

    public void setChecked(boolean checked) {
        this.checked = checked;
    }

}

Of course, this may seem a bit overkill for such a small POJO, but believe me, it proved very useful in some huge projects where I had to browse through big source files and quickly find the methods I was interested in. It also helps understand the source code structure.

In Eclipse, I have created a set of custom templates (Java -> Editor -> Templates in Eclipse’s Preferences dialog) that generate those bars, eg.
– sepa (SEParator for Accessors)
– sepp (SEParator for Properties)
– sepc (SEParator for Constructors)
– etc.

I also modified the standard “new class” template (Java -> Code Style -> Code Templates in Eclipse Preferences screen)

Also, there is an old Eclipse plugin called Coffee-bytes, which enhanced the way Eclipse folds portions of code.
I don’t know if it still works, but I remembed one could define arbitrary foldable zones by adding special comments, like // [SECTION] or something.
It might still work in recent Eclipse revisions, so take a look.