Force.com IDE is in a
maintenance-only state. We still provide support for the product through our official
channels, but updates prior to October 12, 2019 will be only for critical security
issues that arise. On October 12, 2019, we will no longer provide support or updates of
any kind for Force.com IDE. On that date, we will also begin archiving documentation and
removing download links for the product. We recommend that you start migrating to Salesforce Extensions for Visual
Studio Code or one of the great tools made by our partners. For more
information, see The Future
of Salesforce IDEs on the Salesforce Developers Blog.
When you open a file in Eclipse, the file opens in the editor area of the IDE. The editor that
opens is based on the type of file. The Force.com IDE provides specialized editors for XML, Apex
and Visualforce files.
The standard Eclipse editor functionality includes many useful editing features, such as syntax
highlighting, unlimited undo and redo, element selection and formatting, and document formatting.
The main Eclipse menu bar and toolbar contain operations that are applicable to the active
editor.
The tabs at the top of the editor area display the names of files currently open for editing.
An asterisk (*) indicates that a file has unsaved changes.
The tabs at the bottom of the editor area allow you to toggle between different views of the
active file. For example, when you open an XML file, you can edit it in
Design or Source view.
Force.com IDE editors have built-in content assistance for standard Apex and Lightning Platform
metadata types. When editing a custom object, type the less-than sign (“<”) to
pick from a list of valid elements. The Apex editor also provides code assistance; for details,
see
Apex Code Assist.
To use content assistance in a third-party XML editor installed as an Eclipse
plugin, you must extract the schema/metadata.xsd file from
<eclipse_installation>/plugins/com.salesforce.ide.api_<version>.jar
and point the XML editor to this file.
When you save a file, the editor checks for validity. You will not be able to save files to the
server until they are formatted and compile correctly.
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