I would like to copy code to the clipboard from a ...

# intellij

[Tóth István Zoltán]

I would like to copy code to the clipboard from a web app and then paste it into IntelliJ. Would it be possible to add the import information to the code somehow so IntelliJ automatically adds the imports as well?

[Giorgio Vespucci]

I see this settings, at least in the last Ultimate
I believe it's the default 🤔

[Tóth István Zoltán]

I'll check this out. I'm using Kotlin, so I'll have to see if this setting works with it as well.

[Giorgio Vespucci]

I'm using it too nod

[Anna Kozlova]

Unambiguous imports on the fly would work when single class by short name is available. Otherwise, IDEA won't know where to take fully qualified names.

[wasyl]

How does it know the imports when copying the code from IJ to IJ? Like if I copy the same code between files, IJ seems to remember the imports. Is the imports data carried somehow in the clipboard metadata, or it's done in the IDE internally? Or it doesn't work like that and I'm imagining things? 😄

[Tóth István Zoltán]

Yes, this is why I asked. 🙂 In IntelliJ it works well when moving code around. Would be nice to have the same when I copy sample code from the web. Of course, I do have fully qualified names in the web samples as well, so it would be possible to build clipboard data the correct way if there is one.

[Anna Kozlova]

When it's inside IDE, we remember the FQNs in "metadata". If it's from web, then there is no place to store that additional data

[Tóth István Zoltán]

My framework uses actual, runnable code to provide the samples, so the qualified names are actually checked by the compiler during compilation.

[Anna Kozlova]

if you copy fragment with FQNames, then they would be preserved/optimized to imports

[Tóth István Zoltán]

Hm, I'll give that a try, should work if there are no .* imports.

[wasyl]

we remember the FQNs in "metadata".

my question is, is the metadata stored in the IDE or in the clipboard data? I suspect it's in the IDE

[Anna Kozlova]

IDE provides this data to clipboard, so another IDE instance can grab it as well. Not sure you were asking about those dirty implementation details though

[wasyl]

Yep that's what I was asking, I'm saying that if the web app provided the same information to clipboard (basically copied the implementation details), an IJ instance would be able to paste code with imports as well

[Anna Kozlova]

It's overcomplicated to simulate IDE here, just my opinion of cause

[Adam S]

I've looked into this before, because I think it would be a clever solution.

Like @Anna Kozlova says, IntelliJ uses DataFlavor to encode extra metadata to the clipboard. It's quite hard to view this extra metadata.

• The metadata doesn't seem to be available when pasting into websites like https://evercoder.github.io/clipboard-inspector/. I can see it when I use this util: https://github.com/sindresorhus/Pasteboard-Viewer
• The encoded data is saved using Java Serialisation, so again, it's hard to see (see screenshot 2).
• iirc IJ doesn't literally encode the required imports into the metadata, it just encodes a reference to the original file of the copied code. https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/blob/70bceadfce1481b7b582b6c95f2bc7d8e3417675/plugins/kotlin/idea/src/org/jetbrains/kotlin/idea/codeInsight/KotlinCopyPasteReferenceProcessor.kt#L114C13-L114C20
So, also I think it would be hard to reimplement this directly.

[Adam S]

I think an easier solution would be for IntelliJ (or Kotlin plugin) to automatically merge imports of a pasted code to the top of the file.

So, if you copied:

import java.nio.file.Path

class Foo {
  fun bar(file: Path) {
    println(file)
  }
}

Currently, if you paste it at the end of an existing file, the code will be invalid because the imports need to be at the top. But IJ could just automatically merge the pasted imports with the existing imports.

I made a similar request for kts scripts, because it would help with Gradle scripts https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KTIJ-30687/K1-IDE-Automatically-move-import-statement-to-the-top-of-the-file-on-paste-in-scripts

[Adam S]

Another idea: update KotlinCopyPasteReferenceProcessor.kt to also support custom import metadata (i.e. just a list of imports) that can be manually specified by the web app.

[Tóth István Zoltán]

Hm, seems indeed complicated to use the internal format. I guess I'll just copy the imports manually for now.