Code Completion
CIDER provides intelligent code completion for both source buffers (powered by
cider-mode
) and REPL buffers.
Internally CIDER leverages compliment for Clojure and clj-suitable for ClojureScript. |
Improvements to the two libraries automatically translate to improvements in CIDER.
Standard completion
Out-of-the box CIDER uses the standard Emacs tooling for code completion. When you press TAB or M-TAB you’ll get completion candidates in a dedicated buffer.
![Code Completion](../_images/code_completion.png)
There are two things to keep in mind about the standard completion:
Normally TAB only indents, but now it will also do completion if the code is already properly indented. |
Completion styles
CIDER defines a specialized completion category through the cider-complete-at-point
function,
added to completion-at-point-functions
, establishing a dedicated completion category named
cider
.
The CIDER completion at point function supports most completion styles, including
partial-completion
, orderless
and flex
(read more below).
Sometimes the user may want to use a different completion style just for the CIDER
complete at point function. That can be achieved by setting
completion-category-overrides
, overwriting the completion style of the CIDER
complete at point function. The following snippet accomplishes that:
(add-to-list 'completion-category-overrides '(cider (styles basic)))
This specifies that the cider
completion category should employ the basic completion style by
default.
You can also enable the flex
completion style by activating fuzzy candidate matching.
Auto-completion
While the standard Emacs tooling works just fine, we suggest that
CIDER users consider using
company-mode
or corfu-mode
instead. These
can be used for auto-completion in both source code and REPL buffers, with the following advantages:
-
A nicer UI.
-
Integration with Clojure docstrings and Java doc comments.
Configuration
Both company-mode and corfu-mode are affected by the following CIDER configuration options:
-
cider-docstring-max-lines
(default20
) controls how many lines, at most, of this docstring will be included (in a popup or the echo area, depending on your setup) while offering completions. It’s worth noting, for Java documentation, CIDER doesn’t simply trim lines, but it looks at the structure and tries to find the largest combination of these that fits intocider-docstring-max-lines
:-
The entire comment body, followed by its "block tags" (Returns/Throws/Params information)
-
The first sentence of the comment, followed by the block tags
-
The block tags
-
The first sentence of the comment.
-
company-mode installation
To install company-mode
:
M-x package-install
RET company
RET
After installation, you can turn on company-mode
globally:
(global-company-mode)
or through mode-specific hooks:
(add-hook 'cider-repl-mode-hook #'company-mode)
(add-hook 'cider-mode-hook #'company-mode)
When company-mode
is enabled, it will receive completion information
from cider-complete-at-point
and requires no additional setup or plugins.
If you’d prefer to trigger completions manually you can add this to your config:
(setq company-idle-delay nil) ; never start completions automatically
(global-set-key (kbd "M-TAB") #'company-complete) ; use M-TAB, a.k.a. C-M-i, as manual trigger
To make TAB complete, without losing the ability to manually indent, you can add this to your config:
(global-set-key (kbd "TAB") #'company-indent-or-complete-common)
Company’s documentation mechanism and CIDER’s documentation facilities are integrated.
While a completion is being offered to you, you can hit (F1)
(the default company-show-doc-buffer
key binding) for displaying documentation
and arglists under a temporary cider-doc
buffer.
In order for Company to always show docstrings and other metadata under a temporary cider-doc
buffer,
without needing to hit an extra key, please customize:
;; (You may want to do this as a setq-local within a clojure-mode-hook instead)
(custom-set-variables '(company-auto-update-doc t))
Fuzzy candidate matching
By default, CIDER will use the completion styles defined in
completion-styles
, the defaults being (basic partial-completion
emacs22)
since Emacs 23. For a better description of how those
completion styles operates, refer to the official Emacs manual on
how completion alternatives are chosen.
CIDER provides a function to enable the flex
completion style for CIDER-specific
completions. If you wish to enable that, you can add this to your config:
(cider-enable-flex-completion)
This adds the flex
completion style, as introduced in Emacs 27.
Now, company-mode
(and other completion packages like corfu
) will
accept certain fuzziness when matching candidates against the
prefix. For example, typing mi
will show you map-indexed
as one of
the possible completion candidates and cji
will complete to
clojure.java.io
. Different completion examples are shown
here.
cider-company-enable-fuzzy-completion (now deprecated) should be used for Emacs < 27.
|
Completion annotations
Completion candidates will be annotated by default with an abbreviation
corresponding to their type, and (contextually) their namespace. The function
used to format the annotation can be configured by
cider-annotate-completion-function.
The abbreviations used are configured by
cider-completion-annotations-alist
and the context in which their namespace is
included is configured by cider-completion-annotations-include-ns.
![Completion Annotations](../_images/completion-annotations.png)
Completion annotations can be disabled by setting
cider-annotate-completion-candidates to nil .
|
Notes on class disambiguation
Sometimes, the completion user experience may be interrupted by a completing-read
that asks for the Member in class
. This is used for better Java completions and documentation.
However, if you are not interested in the current candidate, disambiguating it is of no use, and the prompt can be a nuisance.
If you are using Company for completions and IDO for completing-read
, you can cause the <up>
and <down>
keys to cancel the prompt by customizing:
(advice-add 'cider-class-choice-completing-read
:around
(lambda (f a b)
(cider--with-temporary-ido-keys "<up>" "<down>"
(funcall f a b))))
Updating stale classes and methods cache
Sometimes, the completion fails to recognize new classes that came with
dependencies that were loaded dynamically after the REPL was started (e.g. via
Boot). Executing M-x cider-completion-flush-caches
(or going through the menu
CIDER Interaction->Misc->Flush completion cache
) forces the completion backend
to re-read all classes it can find on the classpath.
Implementation Details
You don’t really need to know any of this if you’re using only cider-jack-in .
|
The bulk of the code completion logic resides in cider-nrepl
completion middleware. Internally it delegates to compliment
for the Clojure completion and clj-suitable
for the ClojureScript completion.
Starting with nREPL 0.8, there’s also a built-in completions
nREPL op that CIDER will fallback to, in the absence of cider-nrepl
. Its API is similar to that of the complete
op in cider-nrepl
and it can be configured to use different completion functions. The built-in op currently supports only Clojure. See the nREPL docs for more details.
Basically, you’ll get great code completion in the presence of cider-nrepl
and basic completion otherwise.