JavaScript Development Toolkit (JSDT) – Getting Started

What is JSDT?

• A JavaScript IDE for Eclipse based on the Java Development Tools (JDT)
• Has many of the rich editing features of JDT, facilities for error detection and correction, detailed flow analysis etc

How to get it?

• As part of Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers (since Eclipse 3.4)

• By adding ‘Web tools platform’ to plain Eclipse

• Also part of Rational Application Developer (RAD)

Pain Points in JavaScript Development

• Text editor, firebug and browser refresh were the best tools available
• Minimal content assist
• Minimal static validation
• No refactoring support
• No source code navigation support

JSDT Library mechanism

• Library mechanism to manage common objects, variables, and types in a project
• JSDT library : prototyped object/class definitions and JSDoc
• Prepackaged libraries
• User defined libraries

Features

• Content assistance
  

• Script validation and error detection
  

• Quick Fix

• Refactoring

• Same-word highlighting

• Source code navigation