Boost Your Productivity With The Best IntelliJ IDEA Plugins

Leverage Powerful Tools to Streamline Development

IntelliJ IDEA is one of the most popular and fully featured Java integrated development environments on the market. However, out of the box it only provides the basic functionality required for development. To get the most value from IDEA and supercharge your workflow,plugins are essential. They extend the platform by adding extra features and integrations. In this guide, we will explore some of the most useful and highly rated IntelliJ IDEA plugins to install. Each one was carefully selected to enhance productivity and simplify common development tasks. Keep reading to discover how these top plugins can help boost your efficiency.

Automate Repetitive Tasks with Maven Helper

If you build Java projects using Maven, theMaven Helper plugin is a must-have. It aims to make working with Maven-based projects as seamless as possible directly from within IDEA. Some of its marquee features include running Maven goals without leaving the IDE, auto-importing Maven dependencies, updating Maven projects, and more. Maven Helper intelligently parses Maven POM files to provide context-sensitive actions. For example, right-clicking a dependency will show options like “Add to Pom” or “Exclude from Compile”. This level of integration cuts down on manual tasks and context switching between the IDE and command line. Power Maven users will appreciate how it streamlines their build workflow. ###Simplify Object Mapping with JPA Buddy Working with object-relational mapping frameworks like JPA and Hibernate is made simpler with the JPA Buddy plugin. It assists in common object mapping tasks through insightful code completion,LiveTemplates, and other refactoring aids. Some of the ways JPA Buddy helps include auto-generating entity classes from databases,reversing relationships between entities,handling inheritance mapping, and schema generation. These capabilities alone can save hours of manual configuration and coding. The plugin’s smart context actions analyze your code to serve the most relevant refactors. If you do a lot of JPA/Hibernate development, JPA Buddy is hard to pass up. ###Get Kotlin and Lombok Support Out of the Box The Lombok plugin brings support for the popular Kotlin and Lombok annotations directly to IntelliJ IDEA. It understands Kotlin and Lombok code to provide autocompletes,documentation,error highlighting, and more. Without Lombok, IDEA would not be able to recognize syntax like getter/setter generation, constructor injection, and other builder patterns. This could result in issues like missing documentation and redundant code actions. The plugin seamlessly bridges the gap to integrate Lombok features into IDEA’s understanding. Kotlin and Lombok developers will find it becomes a seamless coding experience. ###Boost JavaScript Development with AI Autocompletes Leveraging AI, theCodota plugin analyzes millions of code examples to deliver smart autocompletes for Java and JavaScript in IDEA. As you type, it predicts the most relevant code snippets based on your context. Beyond saving keystrokes, Codota helps developers avoid common mistakes through its auto-suggestions. It even includes detailed documentation extracted from codebases. This gives unprecedented insight compared to standard autocompletes. The plugin is particularly valuable for languages like JavaScript with their sheer number of APIs and frameworks to learn. Give Codota a try to take your code quality and speed to new levels. ###Partake in Collaborative Development with Git Tools The.ignore plugin provides top-notch Git integration features for IDEA. It allows ignoring untracked files through a configurable .gitignore template browser. This prevents accidentally committing dev files like logs or IDEA-specific metadata. Other notable utilities include browsing and searching Git commits from within the IDE, staging and committing directly from the UI, and visualized diffs of file changes. The plugin rounds out IDEA’s support for distributed Version Control Systems (VCS) like Git or Mercurial. Collaborative developers will find its suite of tools invaluable for their daily workflow. ###Browse and Edit Databases Effortlessly
TheDatabase Navigator plugin brings a fully-featured database explorer and editor to IDEA. It supports all major relational databases including MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle and more. Some key capabilities include browsing the schema structure, running SQL scripts directly against databases, viewing data in tables, and executing queries. The plugin integrates tightly with IDEA’s debugging and code navigation. Developers can even update the schema directly from the tool. This makes database-driven projects much more seamless to develop and maintain. ###Automate Repetitive Maven Steps When working with Java or other JVM languages, the build tool Maven is ubiquitous. To optimize the Maven development cycle, the Maven Helper plugin is an absolute must-have for any IDEA user. It brings powerful Maven integration like running common goals without switching tools, auto-importing dependencies from POM files, validating and updating Maven projects directly from the IDE. Best of all, it understands Maven’s POM format to provide highly relevant code completions and refactors through analysis. Maven Helper takes the chore out of routine tasks like compiling, testing or deploying. Its tight IDEA integration means developers spend more time coding and less time waiting on builds. Overall the plugin is incredibly helpful for any project relying on Maven for builds. ###Optimize Spring Development with Assists TheSpring Assistant plugin aids IDEA users who develop enterprise Java applications using the ubiquitous Spring platform. It enhances code completion, navigation and refactoring for Spring features. Some examples of assistance include auto-injecting dependencies, adding common annotations, navigating between XML configs and classes, and refactoring bean names. These types of cross-cutting tasks become much more seamless with the plugin. Spring developers can also quickly search for Spring classes, auto-generate REST docs, and reuse existing Spring fragments. Overall it streamlines the boilerplate side of working with the Spring ecosystem so coders can focus on core application logic. ###Supercharge JavaScript with AI Autocompletes Leveraging AI, the Codota plugin analyzes millions of code examples to deliver smart autocompletes for Java and JavaScript directly in IDEA. As coders type, it predicts the most relevant code snippets based on their context which saves valuable keystrokes. Beyond just speeding up development, Codota helps avoid common mistakes through its AI-suggested auto-complete options. It also includes detailed documentation extracted from real code examples. This gives unprecedented insight over standard autocompletion alone. The plugin proves especially helpful for languages like JavaScript where there are immense APIs and frameworks to learn. Developers can effortlessly discover new language features without constant searches. Give Codota a try to take JavaScript coding quality and speed to new levels. In summary, these are some of the most impactful plugins for IntelliJ IDEA to boost productivity. They streamline tedious tasks, provide powerful integrations, and allow developing at a higher level of abstraction. With the right collection of plugins, IDEA becomes an unparalleled development environment. Be sure to also explore other plugins for your specific languages and frameworks.