JADE Environment Development Ideas

In the interim, in case it's useful I've utilised the ParamListType in the past to create my own primitive method to do the text substitution as per the following example.  Feel free to create something similar yourself:

getFormattedString( pValues : ParamListType ) : String;

vars
    formattedString : String;
    valueIndex : Integer;
    value : Any;
    replacementCount : Integer;
    placeholderString : String;
    missingPlaceholders : String;

begin
    formattedString := self;
 
    foreach valueIndex in 1 to app.getParamListTypeLength( pValues ) do
        value := app.getParamListTypeEntry( valueIndex, pValues );
 
        placeholderString := "{" & ( valueIndex - 1 ).String & "}"; // Making the placeholders "zero relative" for increased familiarity for C# developers
 
        replacementCount := formattedString.replaceString( placeholderString, value.String );
 
        if replacementCount = 0 then
            if missingPlaceholders <> null then
                missingPlaceholders := missingPlaceholders & ", ";
            endif;
            missingPlaceholders := missingPlaceholders & placeholderString;
        endif;
    endforeach;

    if missingPlaceholders <> null then
        app.raiseDeveloperException( "Request to format string but unable to find the following placeholders: " & missingPlaceholders );
    endif;

    return formattedString;
end;

Here's a couple of examples of using the method.  The first example displays 'Something with Bob and Dan in the text' to the interpreter output window.  The second example results in a developer exception being raised, and no additional details in the interpreter output window:

vars
    string : String;
 
begin
    string := "Something with {0} and {1} in the text".getFormattedString( "Bob", "Dan" );
 
    write string;
 
    string := "A call which will fail due to missing placeholders. We have {0} and {1} but we're passing in 4 parameters".getFormattedString( "Bob", "Dan", "Bill", "Doug" );
 
    write string;
end;
 

It would be good if it supported 'calling methods' which return values as well as local variables/parameters/properties.

For example: "Name : {person.getStandardNameDisplay()} Age: {person.getAge()}"

It would also be good if auto-complete could still make suggestions inside the {} even though you're defining a 'string literal'.